Papers by Susan Harrop-Allin
Journal of Music, Health and Wellbeing, 2021
This paper examines online arts and music interventions and experiences of personal and social tr... more This paper examines online arts and music interventions and experiences of personal and social transformation during the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, as recounted by a South African music therapist and community music specialist. Using the metaphor of 'fire to flower, symbolised by the indigenous Fire Lily, we illustrate clients' personal 'transformation' using vignettes sourced from two cases in the music therapist's practice. Reflecting on these arts interventions and their impact, we consider the challenges and opportunities for transforming practice, prompted by the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa. We first focus on the affordances of technology for working cross modally and enabling closer connections between the arts therapies and community music; and then advocate for closer collaboration between these fields. We end with the 'Jerusalema' music-dance phenomenon as exemplary of how participatory music-making can be harnessed as a creative resource for building communities and developing social cohesion in South Africa.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Multimodal approaches to research and pedagogy: Recognition, resources and access. Edited by Arlene Archer and Denise Newfield., 2014
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper reflects on a service learning project undertaken by University of the Witwatersrand (... more This paper reflects on a service learning project undertaken by University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Community Music students and lecturers in northern Limpopo province in South Africa. The project represents the applied, practical component of the recently-introduced Community Music specialization in the Wits BMus degree. Designed as a community music intervention, the project comprises six-day music and drama workshops for primary school children, working with local musicians. Students co-facilitate music workshops and participate in a homestay program that aims to foster inter-cultural understanding and communication.
As Community Music and music service-learning are new areas of scholarship and practice in South Africa, this project forms part of research that examines the nature, meanings and value of Community Music interventions in local cultural and educational contexts. It also speaks to research that investigates the impacts of “arts for social change” in community engagement in South African Higher Education (Berman & Allen, 2012).
The paper reports on primary school children’s musical participation in the context of the “poverty of learning” characteristic of many South African government schools. Educational deficiencies contrast starkly, however, with the richness of local music that includes children’s musical games and songs. Integrating and drawing on these musical resources, the workshops include co-creating music and drama narratives that address community issues articulated by Tshulu Trust (a non-profit community-based organisation in HaMakuya). Each six-day iteration, over three years, was video-recorded and documented by students and lecturers, who reflected on children’s levels of learning as well as their own experiences as facilitators. The school children and local musicians, who were translators and “cultural intermediaries” in the project, provided oral and written feedback.
The paper contends that connecting with children’s own lives and recruiting their musical capacities enabled significant shifts in their ability to actively participate, contribute, and collaborate. A welcoming and participatory community music approach to teaching and learning created spaces for developing children’s agency and responsibility. Finally, the paper reflects on the significance of the project for Community Music students, using focus group responses and students’ written reflections to explore how ‘service learning through the arts’ developed their facilitation skills and enhanced their understanding of music-making as a tool for social transformation and development in South Africa.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This article reports on the evaluation of a new partnership between the University of the
Witwate... more This article reports on the evaluation of a new partnership between the University of the
Witwatersrand’s Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC) and the Music Division at
the Wits School of Arts (WSOA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 2015, the
partnership aims to bring live music to the wards of WDGMC through a student placement
in the hospital, which forms part of the Bachelor of Music students’ fourth year Community
Music course. The article examines the effects of live music performances on patients, staff,
and hospital spaces more broadly. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire, nurse,
and student focus groups, as well as student academic essays. The results revealed a range
of benefits and suggest that live music performances may be able to humanise hospital
spaces, enabling different modes of musical engagements that confer agency and control
to patients, their carers, and nurses. The article concludes by advocating for a mutuallybeneficial
relationship between the health sciences and the arts, through community music
interventions such as this pilot Wits “music in hospital” project.
Keywords: arts and health; Community Music; hospital; live music; musicking
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
SAMUS South African Journal of Musicology, 2005
This review article investigates the potential in selected recent South African publications for ... more This review article investigates the potential in selected recent South African publications for developing the interface between ethnomusicology and music education, in a relationship that encourages a critical edge. It engages the challenge posed by such texts for reconciling accessibility in the classroom with theoretical rigour in ethnomusicological research, and suggests that the point of accessibility and relevance in ethnomusicology is in informing teaching (methodologically) and developing materials (conceptually and theoretically). The article explores the extent to which the texts constitute a dialogue between ethnomusicological and educational enterprises, and articulate - implicitly or explicitly - with the present Arts and Culture curriculum. It argues that music educators and researchers should engage more deeply with the complexity of Arts and Culture in the context of educational transformation in South Africa, and concludes that not all the texts engage equally or consistently with such complexity.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
SARE Southern African Review of Comparative Education, History of Education and Educational Development, 2014
Abstract
This paper uses the way in which the C Major scale is presented in the most recent
ite... more Abstract
This paper uses the way in which the C Major scale is presented in the most recent
iteration of the curriculum in Grade 6 to illustrate some of the curriculum’s
fundamental limitations and that of the ‘back to basics’ call with which it has been
closely associated. The paper subjects aspects of the Creative Arts/Life Orientation
and Social Sciences curriculum to a close textual scrutiny, arguing that the so-called
Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is not really ‘basic’ at all.
Furthermore, with regard to Music and History education, at least, the authors
contend that ideologically and pedagogically it hardly represents an advance over
the kind of authoritarian curricula that prospered under apartheid. Little remains
of the immediate post-apartheid impetus behind curriculum-makers’ attempts to
cut the traces with apartheid precedents. The authors contend that CAPS, in an
environment of public anxiety and hasty political calculation, has fallen back on
Eurocentric ideas of what constitutes knowledge and an unproductive pedagogy
that is, in some ways, an unavoidable consequence of this regression.
Keywords: Curriculum; CAPS; Music education; music literacy; History
education; Intermediate Phase; Motshekga; back to basics; Bantu Education
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Drawing on a study of children's musical games in urban South Africa, this article employs two th... more Drawing on a study of children's musical games in urban South Africa, this article employs two theoretical frames: that of multimodality and the multiliteracies pedagogy. These are applied to a contextual analysis of the forms of musicality that musical games embody and to ways of incorporating children's play into pedagogy. Based on ethnographic research in primary schools in Soweto, I first examine representative examples of musical games in order to demonstrate children's musicianship in relation to the concept of multimodality. Analysis reveals the games' sophistication in terms of children's deployment of multiple modes and the inventiveness their methods imply. Furthermore, a multimodal theoretical frame and analytical approach enables an understanding of musicality as the capacity to " design. " Second, children's multimodal musicality prompts questions about how such musicality may become a resource in formal learning. I propose that applying the multiliteracies pedagogy to music education offers a methodological solution for " recruiting " musical games so that the capacities children demonstrate in their games may be developed.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Music Education Research, 2017
Inspired by local arts community engagement initiatives and community
music interventions intern... more Inspired by local arts community engagement initiatives and community
music interventions internationally, Wits University (in Johannesburg,
South Africa) developed a model of service learning that links the
intentions, methodologies and purposes of these domains to promote
student learning and benefit communities. This paper examines the
quality and content of Community Music students’ learning in a pilot
project located in Limpopo province in South Africa. Data from student
focus groups and academic essays were analysed in terms of the
discernible levels of students’ ‘academic, personal and civic learning’
[Ash, S. L., and P. H. Clayton. 2009. “Generating, Deepening, and
Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied
Learning.” Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education 1: 25–48]. This
critical reflection framework enabled students to articulate and deepen
their learning, demonstrating their development in creative musical
leadership and sense of social responsiveness and responsibility. Findings
prompt further interrogation of the purposes and impact of community
music service learning as a model of community engagement in South
African higher education, to advance the key role of the arts in South
Africa’s social transformation.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Our paper focuses on two service learning projects that are integrated into Wits University's com... more Our paper focuses on two service learning projects that are integrated into Wits University's community music course as a form of community engagement in South African higher education. The research considers the nature of student learning in community music service learning. We examine the qualities and content of student learning in two contextually contrasting projects: the first is a pilot music and health project, where community music students perform for and interact with staff, patients and carers in a local hospital; the second is an arts community engagement project where students facilitate music and drama workshops in rural primary schools, while participating in a homestay program. Based on lecturer observation and data from students' journals, focus groups and academic essays, we analyze students' academic, personal and civic learning (Ash & Clayton, 2009). Key findings include students' development of critical, reflective practice; connecting community music theory to practice; learning applied musicianship, collaboration and facilitation skills and developing cultural sensitivity and social awareness that lie at the heart of community engagement for social change. In responding to the social, political, and cultural complexities of South Africa, we suggest that both projects are contributing to the development of Community Music theory and practice in a Southern African context.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Thesis Chapters by Susan Harrop-Allin
This thesis investigates the development of learner-centred teaching in South African music educa... more This thesis investigates the development of learner-centred teaching in South African music education
by exploring the possibilities that children‟s musical games offer for pedagogy. Within the broader
context of the complexities, challenges and constraints in Arts and Culture education implementation,
it proposes that the Multiliteracies theoretical and methodological framework facilitates learnercentred
teaching because it „recruits‟ learners‟ situated cultural practices as potential resources for
pedagogy. Thus a Multiliteracies approach can be applied productively to music education in order to
transform teaching and learning.
This research also advocates utilising aspects of ethnography in music education. An ethnographic
approach is used to analyse the musical, cultural and social content and value of township children‟s
musical games, and how these games constitute children‟s musical situated practices. Ethnographic
methods are used to describe and interpret such games, and it is proposed that ethnography brings to
music education a deeper understanding of musical forms and practices in their socio-cultural context.
It is argued that ethnographic research is necessary prior to embarking on the pedagogy of recruitment
central to the Multiliteracies approach.
It is proposed that children‟s games are valuable resources that may be recruited for formal teaching
and learning. The primary thesis is that the Multiliteracies pedagogical framework provides a
methodology for incorporating and developing learners‟ musical practices in music education. This
proposal is tested in three case studies working with Arts and Culture teachers in Soweto primary
schools. The process of applying a Multiliteracies pedagogical innovation to music education was
observed and recorded in these schools, in order to investigate the dialogue between curriculum
implementation and learners‟ embodied musical practices.
The thesis finds that a Multiliteracies approach can be applied effectively to music education, given
particular school conditions and the presence of an artistic sensibility in Arts and Culture teachers. It
concludes that, despite the constraints of the present South African education system, adopting
innovative pedagogies such as the Multiliteracies approach enables teachers to use their learners‟
musical practices productively in ways that promote transformative learning. Thus this research
contributes both to music education and to the Multiliteracies endeavour, and promotes a closer
relationship between the epistemological assumptions and methods of ethnomusicology and music
education.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Books by Susan Harrop-Allin
Musical Ecologies: community music ensembles in action , 2022
This chapter focuses on the Venda tshikona reed-pipe dance-a traditional music practice in South ... more This chapter focuses on the Venda tshikona reed-pipe dance-a traditional music practice in South Africa-and provides a glimpse of how 'music of a community' links in complex ways to traditional cultural practices, education and the politics of knowledge. Located in the rural chiefdom of HaMakuya, the chapter maps tshikona's multiple meanings as a nexus within a rich musical community and connected to the wider social ecology. Using the lens of the
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Community Music in Italy: Experiences, contexts and perspectives (published in Italian), 2019
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Susan Harrop-Allin
Proceedings of the XV International Seminar of the ISME Commission on Community Music Activity Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia 10th – 14th July 2018, 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Susan Harrop-Allin
As Community Music and music service-learning are new areas of scholarship and practice in South Africa, this project forms part of research that examines the nature, meanings and value of Community Music interventions in local cultural and educational contexts. It also speaks to research that investigates the impacts of “arts for social change” in community engagement in South African Higher Education (Berman & Allen, 2012).
The paper reports on primary school children’s musical participation in the context of the “poverty of learning” characteristic of many South African government schools. Educational deficiencies contrast starkly, however, with the richness of local music that includes children’s musical games and songs. Integrating and drawing on these musical resources, the workshops include co-creating music and drama narratives that address community issues articulated by Tshulu Trust (a non-profit community-based organisation in HaMakuya). Each six-day iteration, over three years, was video-recorded and documented by students and lecturers, who reflected on children’s levels of learning as well as their own experiences as facilitators. The school children and local musicians, who were translators and “cultural intermediaries” in the project, provided oral and written feedback.
The paper contends that connecting with children’s own lives and recruiting their musical capacities enabled significant shifts in their ability to actively participate, contribute, and collaborate. A welcoming and participatory community music approach to teaching and learning created spaces for developing children’s agency and responsibility. Finally, the paper reflects on the significance of the project for Community Music students, using focus group responses and students’ written reflections to explore how ‘service learning through the arts’ developed their facilitation skills and enhanced their understanding of music-making as a tool for social transformation and development in South Africa.
Witwatersrand’s Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC) and the Music Division at
the Wits School of Arts (WSOA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 2015, the
partnership aims to bring live music to the wards of WDGMC through a student placement
in the hospital, which forms part of the Bachelor of Music students’ fourth year Community
Music course. The article examines the effects of live music performances on patients, staff,
and hospital spaces more broadly. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire, nurse,
and student focus groups, as well as student academic essays. The results revealed a range
of benefits and suggest that live music performances may be able to humanise hospital
spaces, enabling different modes of musical engagements that confer agency and control
to patients, their carers, and nurses. The article concludes by advocating for a mutuallybeneficial
relationship between the health sciences and the arts, through community music
interventions such as this pilot Wits “music in hospital” project.
Keywords: arts and health; Community Music; hospital; live music; musicking
This paper uses the way in which the C Major scale is presented in the most recent
iteration of the curriculum in Grade 6 to illustrate some of the curriculum’s
fundamental limitations and that of the ‘back to basics’ call with which it has been
closely associated. The paper subjects aspects of the Creative Arts/Life Orientation
and Social Sciences curriculum to a close textual scrutiny, arguing that the so-called
Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is not really ‘basic’ at all.
Furthermore, with regard to Music and History education, at least, the authors
contend that ideologically and pedagogically it hardly represents an advance over
the kind of authoritarian curricula that prospered under apartheid. Little remains
of the immediate post-apartheid impetus behind curriculum-makers’ attempts to
cut the traces with apartheid precedents. The authors contend that CAPS, in an
environment of public anxiety and hasty political calculation, has fallen back on
Eurocentric ideas of what constitutes knowledge and an unproductive pedagogy
that is, in some ways, an unavoidable consequence of this regression.
Keywords: Curriculum; CAPS; Music education; music literacy; History
education; Intermediate Phase; Motshekga; back to basics; Bantu Education
music interventions internationally, Wits University (in Johannesburg,
South Africa) developed a model of service learning that links the
intentions, methodologies and purposes of these domains to promote
student learning and benefit communities. This paper examines the
quality and content of Community Music students’ learning in a pilot
project located in Limpopo province in South Africa. Data from student
focus groups and academic essays were analysed in terms of the
discernible levels of students’ ‘academic, personal and civic learning’
[Ash, S. L., and P. H. Clayton. 2009. “Generating, Deepening, and
Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied
Learning.” Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education 1: 25–48]. This
critical reflection framework enabled students to articulate and deepen
their learning, demonstrating their development in creative musical
leadership and sense of social responsiveness and responsibility. Findings
prompt further interrogation of the purposes and impact of community
music service learning as a model of community engagement in South
African higher education, to advance the key role of the arts in South
Africa’s social transformation.
Thesis Chapters by Susan Harrop-Allin
by exploring the possibilities that children‟s musical games offer for pedagogy. Within the broader
context of the complexities, challenges and constraints in Arts and Culture education implementation,
it proposes that the Multiliteracies theoretical and methodological framework facilitates learnercentred
teaching because it „recruits‟ learners‟ situated cultural practices as potential resources for
pedagogy. Thus a Multiliteracies approach can be applied productively to music education in order to
transform teaching and learning.
This research also advocates utilising aspects of ethnography in music education. An ethnographic
approach is used to analyse the musical, cultural and social content and value of township children‟s
musical games, and how these games constitute children‟s musical situated practices. Ethnographic
methods are used to describe and interpret such games, and it is proposed that ethnography brings to
music education a deeper understanding of musical forms and practices in their socio-cultural context.
It is argued that ethnographic research is necessary prior to embarking on the pedagogy of recruitment
central to the Multiliteracies approach.
It is proposed that children‟s games are valuable resources that may be recruited for formal teaching
and learning. The primary thesis is that the Multiliteracies pedagogical framework provides a
methodology for incorporating and developing learners‟ musical practices in music education. This
proposal is tested in three case studies working with Arts and Culture teachers in Soweto primary
schools. The process of applying a Multiliteracies pedagogical innovation to music education was
observed and recorded in these schools, in order to investigate the dialogue between curriculum
implementation and learners‟ embodied musical practices.
The thesis finds that a Multiliteracies approach can be applied effectively to music education, given
particular school conditions and the presence of an artistic sensibility in Arts and Culture teachers. It
concludes that, despite the constraints of the present South African education system, adopting
innovative pedagogies such as the Multiliteracies approach enables teachers to use their learners‟
musical practices productively in ways that promote transformative learning. Thus this research
contributes both to music education and to the Multiliteracies endeavour, and promotes a closer
relationship between the epistemological assumptions and methods of ethnomusicology and music
education.
Books by Susan Harrop-Allin
Conference Presentations by Susan Harrop-Allin
As Community Music and music service-learning are new areas of scholarship and practice in South Africa, this project forms part of research that examines the nature, meanings and value of Community Music interventions in local cultural and educational contexts. It also speaks to research that investigates the impacts of “arts for social change” in community engagement in South African Higher Education (Berman & Allen, 2012).
The paper reports on primary school children’s musical participation in the context of the “poverty of learning” characteristic of many South African government schools. Educational deficiencies contrast starkly, however, with the richness of local music that includes children’s musical games and songs. Integrating and drawing on these musical resources, the workshops include co-creating music and drama narratives that address community issues articulated by Tshulu Trust (a non-profit community-based organisation in HaMakuya). Each six-day iteration, over three years, was video-recorded and documented by students and lecturers, who reflected on children’s levels of learning as well as their own experiences as facilitators. The school children and local musicians, who were translators and “cultural intermediaries” in the project, provided oral and written feedback.
The paper contends that connecting with children’s own lives and recruiting their musical capacities enabled significant shifts in their ability to actively participate, contribute, and collaborate. A welcoming and participatory community music approach to teaching and learning created spaces for developing children’s agency and responsibility. Finally, the paper reflects on the significance of the project for Community Music students, using focus group responses and students’ written reflections to explore how ‘service learning through the arts’ developed their facilitation skills and enhanced their understanding of music-making as a tool for social transformation and development in South Africa.
Witwatersrand’s Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC) and the Music Division at
the Wits School of Arts (WSOA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 2015, the
partnership aims to bring live music to the wards of WDGMC through a student placement
in the hospital, which forms part of the Bachelor of Music students’ fourth year Community
Music course. The article examines the effects of live music performances on patients, staff,
and hospital spaces more broadly. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire, nurse,
and student focus groups, as well as student academic essays. The results revealed a range
of benefits and suggest that live music performances may be able to humanise hospital
spaces, enabling different modes of musical engagements that confer agency and control
to patients, their carers, and nurses. The article concludes by advocating for a mutuallybeneficial
relationship between the health sciences and the arts, through community music
interventions such as this pilot Wits “music in hospital” project.
Keywords: arts and health; Community Music; hospital; live music; musicking
This paper uses the way in which the C Major scale is presented in the most recent
iteration of the curriculum in Grade 6 to illustrate some of the curriculum’s
fundamental limitations and that of the ‘back to basics’ call with which it has been
closely associated. The paper subjects aspects of the Creative Arts/Life Orientation
and Social Sciences curriculum to a close textual scrutiny, arguing that the so-called
Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is not really ‘basic’ at all.
Furthermore, with regard to Music and History education, at least, the authors
contend that ideologically and pedagogically it hardly represents an advance over
the kind of authoritarian curricula that prospered under apartheid. Little remains
of the immediate post-apartheid impetus behind curriculum-makers’ attempts to
cut the traces with apartheid precedents. The authors contend that CAPS, in an
environment of public anxiety and hasty political calculation, has fallen back on
Eurocentric ideas of what constitutes knowledge and an unproductive pedagogy
that is, in some ways, an unavoidable consequence of this regression.
Keywords: Curriculum; CAPS; Music education; music literacy; History
education; Intermediate Phase; Motshekga; back to basics; Bantu Education
music interventions internationally, Wits University (in Johannesburg,
South Africa) developed a model of service learning that links the
intentions, methodologies and purposes of these domains to promote
student learning and benefit communities. This paper examines the
quality and content of Community Music students’ learning in a pilot
project located in Limpopo province in South Africa. Data from student
focus groups and academic essays were analysed in terms of the
discernible levels of students’ ‘academic, personal and civic learning’
[Ash, S. L., and P. H. Clayton. 2009. “Generating, Deepening, and
Documenting Learning: The Power of Critical Reflection in Applied
Learning.” Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education 1: 25–48]. This
critical reflection framework enabled students to articulate and deepen
their learning, demonstrating their development in creative musical
leadership and sense of social responsiveness and responsibility. Findings
prompt further interrogation of the purposes and impact of community
music service learning as a model of community engagement in South
African higher education, to advance the key role of the arts in South
Africa’s social transformation.
by exploring the possibilities that children‟s musical games offer for pedagogy. Within the broader
context of the complexities, challenges and constraints in Arts and Culture education implementation,
it proposes that the Multiliteracies theoretical and methodological framework facilitates learnercentred
teaching because it „recruits‟ learners‟ situated cultural practices as potential resources for
pedagogy. Thus a Multiliteracies approach can be applied productively to music education in order to
transform teaching and learning.
This research also advocates utilising aspects of ethnography in music education. An ethnographic
approach is used to analyse the musical, cultural and social content and value of township children‟s
musical games, and how these games constitute children‟s musical situated practices. Ethnographic
methods are used to describe and interpret such games, and it is proposed that ethnography brings to
music education a deeper understanding of musical forms and practices in their socio-cultural context.
It is argued that ethnographic research is necessary prior to embarking on the pedagogy of recruitment
central to the Multiliteracies approach.
It is proposed that children‟s games are valuable resources that may be recruited for formal teaching
and learning. The primary thesis is that the Multiliteracies pedagogical framework provides a
methodology for incorporating and developing learners‟ musical practices in music education. This
proposal is tested in three case studies working with Arts and Culture teachers in Soweto primary
schools. The process of applying a Multiliteracies pedagogical innovation to music education was
observed and recorded in these schools, in order to investigate the dialogue between curriculum
implementation and learners‟ embodied musical practices.
The thesis finds that a Multiliteracies approach can be applied effectively to music education, given
particular school conditions and the presence of an artistic sensibility in Arts and Culture teachers. It
concludes that, despite the constraints of the present South African education system, adopting
innovative pedagogies such as the Multiliteracies approach enables teachers to use their learners‟
musical practices productively in ways that promote transformative learning. Thus this research
contributes both to music education and to the Multiliteracies endeavour, and promotes a closer
relationship between the epistemological assumptions and methods of ethnomusicology and music
education.