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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.

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 In this article, much of the available published and unpublished scholarly work was reviewed for synthesis into narrative form.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.

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 […]

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.

The New York Times 1619 Project materials on American popular culture were presented to college students at a Historically Black University & College (HBCU) and Predominantly White Institution (PWI). Guided by Critical Race Media Literacy, we employed quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore the knowledge-based and emotional responses to Black historical media. The findings suggest that HBCU and PWI students had similar levels of prior knowledge. HBCU and PWI students experienced disparate emotional responses to the material. Overall, both HBCU and PWI students’ knowledge increased on this topic following the study as the content is underrepresented in education and popular culture. 

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.

This article explores how the musical Hamilton can be used as a way to bring students to a new understanding of American government at the introductory level. As a recent pop-culture smash, Hamilton has brought to the fore the possibility of a new civic conversation about our political beginnings. With many citizens lacking a sufficient understanding of American political culture at this fraught time, the introductory American government course is the ideal place to enhance civic understanding. This article discusses how music from the Hamilton cast album, as well as videos about the show, were used during two semesters of the introductory American government course at a regional public university. Doing so encouraged discussion and active learning about key concepts and critical moments in American history that have shaped politics through the present day.

Dunlap's initial memories of music are that she cannot ever remember being without it. As a child growing up in a Black household, music was as all-encompassing as the air they breathed: It was sacred. There was cleaning music and worship music. There was family reunion and/or cookout, but not picnic, music. As people anxiously anticipate the guaranteed uncertainties of the 2020-21 school year, they possess a beautiful opportunity to challenge ourselves and students to develop meaningful ways of rising above the madness and toward a brighter, more socially just and equitable future. No matter what happens next, 2020 will forever be remembered as the year that changed everything and caused the entire world to question everything and everyone they believed in.

Fiddling-vernacular violin playing, largely in oral tradition--has been an important part of American musical life for centuries. Fiddlers are traditional culture bearers who, during most of our history, learned their craft through face-to-face relationships, largely within the family and neighborhood. Their fiddling was a \"tradition\" in the sense of a widely disseminated definition of that word from 1949: \"that information, those skills, concepts, products, etc., which one acquires almost inevitably by virtue of the circumstances to which he is born.\" Here, Goertzen determines the time-honored factors of family and community played in Roger's cultivation of the fiddle and the modern factors that have entered the picture, and how are those affecting younger fiddlers.