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Frontier Figures is a tour-de-force exploration of how the American West, both as physical space and inspiration, animated American music. Examining the work of such composers as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell, Beth E. Levy addresses questions of regionalism, race, and representation as well as changing relationships to the natural world to highlight the intersections between classical music and the diverse worlds of Indians, pioneers, and cowboys. Levy draws from an array of genres to show how different brands of western Americana were absorbed into American culture by way of sheet music, radio, lecture recitals, the concert hall, and film. Frontier Figures is a comprehensive illumination of what the West meant and still means to composers living and writing long after the close of the frontier.

After years of studying piano as a young woman in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson curated her music book, a common practice at the time. Now part of the Dickinson Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, this bound volume of 107 pieces of published sheet music includes the poet's favorite instrumental piano music and vocal music, ranging from theme and variation sets to vernacular music, which was also enjoyed by the family's servants. Offering a fresh historical perspective on a poetic voice that has become canonical in American literature, this original study brings this artifact to life, documenting Dickinson's early years of musical study through the time her music was bound in the early 1850s, which tellingly coincided with the writing of her first poems. Using Dickinson's letters and poems alongside newspapers and other archival sources, George Boziwick explores the various composers, music sellers, and publishers behind this music and Dickinson's attendance at performances, presenting new insights into the multiple layers of meaning that music held for her.

The focus of this study is the early music education of Charlie Gabriel who learned to play jazz as a child in New Orleans and went on to enjoy a successful, international performance career. The work is based on an oral history account where the primary data collection process was interview. The key issues that emerged from the oral history are (1) the ubiquitous presence of music in Mr. Gabriel’s life experience and the musical enculturation this presence enabled, (2) the life-sustaining role of music in the lives of family members, which gave rise to a drive to participate actively in music and a pervasive striving for musical excellence, and (3) ever-present mentorship and apprenticeship in Mr. Gabriel’s home and in the musical community. These issues are discussed in the context of related literature on the roles played by musical families; the musical community; music for income/supporting survival, including federal support during the Great Depression; striving for musical excellence in both informal and formal learning contexts; and African roots of early jazz pedagogy

The purpose of this study is to construct a concise historical narrative of the development and characteristics of African American styles of marching band. While some extant research studies have been published in this area of study, the focus has been primarily on individual exemplary teachers or university band programs. In this article, much of the available published and unpublished scholarly work was reviewed for synthesis into narrative form. Unique style characteristics of African American marching bands are identified and tied to historical developments. The author proposes that African American styles of marching band be examined as an art form through the lens of historicultural research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate nationwide enrollment in high school music courses from 1982 until 2009 to determine what trends in music enrollment existed and whether these trends were affected by the passage and implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). With data from 10 separate nationally representative high school transcript studies conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, a unique data set was constructed that tracked the transcript-indicated 9th-through 12th-grade music course enrollment patterns for the U.S. graduating classes of 1982, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2005, and 2009. Descriptive results showed that overall music enrollment patterns were relatively stable in the public schools, with roughly 34% of all students consistently enrolling in at least one music course during high school across all cohorts. Abbreviated interrupted time series analyses suggest that NCLB had no effect on overall music enrollment rates but exacerbated the preexisting underrepresentation in music courses of Hispanic students, English language learners, and students with Individualized Education Plans.

In 1966, David Baker, a Black man and esteemed jazz musician and composer, created and developed the Jazz Studies program at Indiana University (IU). The purpose of this study was to investigate how David Baker came to join the faculty and created the Jazz Studies program at IU through an examination of the school’s course offerings and historical context between the years 1949–1969. This time period captures when jazz was evolving from its roots as an informally learned art form into one that was taught in academic settings, as well as important evolutionary moments in jazz, specifically the transition from bebop and cool jazz through the development of hard bop, modal jazz, and Third Stream. Finally, it captures the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s which coincided with IU’s hiring of David Baker and the school’s decision to begin to include jazz courses in its curricular offerings. This examination concludes with a discussion of relevant implications for jazz and music education.

W.E.B. Du Bois asserted that black students are better served by attending predominantly black schools than hostile integrated schools in a context of racial discrimination. The conventional assumption is that black students benefit educationally by attending schools with more white peers, which have access to greater resources. However, the theory of the functionality of discrimination advances the idea that black students may face greater discrimination in school settings with numerous white peers as a result of a competitive process and white appropriation of preferred resources. Using the National Survey of Black Americans, we find evidence of a nonmonotonic relationship between high school racial composition and years of schooling completed, high school graduation, likelihood of being employed, and likelihood of owning a home. We conclude, contrary to conventional belief, that it is not unambiguously the case that black students gain from attending schools with more white peers.

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a $4 million grant to support a collaboration between […]

This article argues that one of the best ways to chart the complexity of Hamilton’s cultural reverberations is via the analytical lens of genre. Indeed, many of the (academic) controversies surrounding the musical are related to an unease with how its pop culture genres intersect with cultural, historical, and political meaning-making processes. At stake is the ongoing dynamics between the complicity and the multiplicity of the aesthetic product—between the confirmation of (genre) expectations and mythical narratives on the one hand, and innovation and intervention, on the other. Specifically, this article considers the pedagogic role that genres play for Hamilton: the musical has not only been lauded by instructors across the U.S. for use in their classrooms, but the creators of the musical have themselves reinforced the pedagogic angle both as a marketing tool and as part of what they see as their social and political commitment. Consequently, this essay draws on a transdisciplinary conception of genre that has emerged in the last three decades to test its affordances for tracing the socio-political efficacy of pop culture works.