Entangled in Cultural Hegemony: A Music Educator's Autoethnography

• In Event: Cultural and Community Music-Making

Abstract

This paper explores the entanglements between society, education, and cultural hegemony. It does so from the autoethnographic perspective of a music educator turned researcher, and as such, it traces the author’s journey from being a young teacher with social justice ideals to being a more experienced teacher and researcher with deeper understanding of the complexities pertaining to cultural hegemony. Presenting a blend of personal narrative and educational theory, the author argues that because music and culture and inseparably connected and because hegemony and education are similarly linked, music education has been – and perhaps will always be – deeply entangled with cultural hegemony.

Author

• Stephen Fairbanks, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign