Popular traditional music in the schoolcurriculum: does it help to develop a “national being” or the educate fordemocracy?

Abstract

This paper refers to minorities’ musical expressions and their treatment and articulation in the school curriculum, this being considered as part of social discourse and therefore embedded in power relations. We deal with two main aspects: the first one refers to the way in which traditional popular music is included at school; specifically, the way minority groups’ musical expressions are treated in everyday school practices and the meaning that is built about these artistic practices considered as ‘alterity’. The second aspect refers to the diverse arguments that justify the presence of popular traditional music in the curriculum from two different perspectives: the ‘nationalist’ discourse in contrast with the one of ‘education for democracy’. The Critical Pedagogy perspective revels the positivist treatment of folk music as an ‘artifact’ in schools. The analysis of institutions and educational practices in the Argentinean context show an attitude about Art oriented towards the construction of a national being blended with Eurocentric features, in wich education for democracy is still in process.

Keywords

• música popular tradicional
• curriculum escolar
• identidad
• nacionalismo