A conceptual study of spirituality in selected writings of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

Several authors have noted that one of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s aims was to dissolve the mind–body dualism, typical of Cartesianism. However, there has been little research on the spirit–body connection, as it appears in Jaques-Dalcroze’s writings. The purpose of this document analysis is to understand how a hermeneutic phenomenological model for spirituality in music education can inform our understanding of spirituality in selected writings by Jaques-Dalcroze. In the adapted model holism, balance, aesthetic experience, and movement in time, space, and with energy emerged as core concepts. This gives us a much richer understanding of the Dalcroze approach than has hitherto been available and adds to a growing narrative about the spiritual as it pertains to Jaques-Dalcroze and the approach he initiated

Singing and cultural understanding: A music education perspective

This article explores the relationship between singing and cultural understanding. Singing emerges in infancy and develops through processes of enculturation and socialization. When we sing songs from diverse cultures, we are granted with opportunities to learn about the cultures of others, and gain a better understanding of our own. Thus, singing songs from different cultures may play important roles in the construction of our identities and in how we perceive and understand others, and ultimately ourselves. Cultural understanding, however, is complex in nature and multi-layered. Even if research findings concerning the relationship between singing and cultural understanding are mixed, we argue that there is value in enhancing students\u27 cultural understanding through singing multicultural songs. Singing multicultural songs can also promote the well being of students. It is beyond the education of music. It is about a comprehensive education of humans as social beings and music as a human endeavor. © 2013 The Author(s)

Disruption, dissonance and embodiment: Creativity, health and risk in music narratives

This article explores notions of creativity, health and risk, drawing on interviews with freelance musicians in the UK. The social context of insecure music work is explored along with hegemonic discourses of creativity in which hedonism, risk and sacrifice are connected. The study draws on narrative analysis in order to examine responses to disruptions that affect creative work. It also explores ongoing accounts of dissonance in music work. The research builds on the new musicology in exploring the cultural basis of creative ideals: these extend beyond the arts to influence many areas of social life. It highlights the way in which the exercise of aesthetic judgements, including judgements about the self, serve to include and exclude particular identities, valuing and diminishing their contributions. The study also builds on sociological debates concerning the regulatory functions of reflexivity and body management in the context of late modernity. Here, strategies of embodiment are also seen in relation to empowerment as challenges to hegemonic notions of creativity. Finally, the research builds on methodological debates surrounding narrative analysis, adopting a sociological approach that emphasizes the particular context of music work and identifies core narratives that reveal connections between everyday experiences and deeper cultural processes