Sleepwalkers Beware: Towards a Post-Structuralist Critique of Popular Music in Higher Education

In: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices

Zack Moir and John Hails

Abstract:

This chapter deals with higher popular music education (HPME) and has a particular focus on the teaching and learning of composition. Our interest in this area derives from our practice as musicians and educators, and our deeply-held mutual belief that creative engagement with music should be central to music education for all. In writing this chapter we have borrowed from the language and ideas of post-structuralism, focusing particularly on the work-concept (discussed below). Although this movement could be said to relate principally to literary theory (most famously the writings of Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida), specific applications to the field of music (particularly those of Lydia Goehr (1992)) have served as a touchstone for our thinking.