ABSTRACT
Drawing on Chapters 3, 4, and 5 in particular, this chapter outlines a tri-faceted pedagogy for activist music education that emerges from activist-musicians’ assertions about music education. This conclusion explicates a pedagogy of community based on activist-musicians’ emphasis on connectivity, a pedagogy of expression rooted in both honoring lived experiences and sharing them through music, and a pedagogy of noticing that emerges from activist-musicians’ work on questioning and critical thinking. Combining these pedagogies sets the conditions for future activism among youth and offers a practical enactment of critical pedagogy for music education. The 20 activist-musicians provide important considerations of ways in which music education may embolden youth to challenge oppressive ideologies and to connect to one another and to others more removed from their realities, as well as honoring and sharing their own lived experiences. Activist-musicians put forward music education as connective, communicative, and critical. Listening to their voices in turbulent social times—given their work supporting identity politics, speaking out against oppression, and using music to share important stories—provides a way forward for music education in a manner that supports the voices with the least amount of privilege while heightening awareness among more privileged students of the oppressions faced by others.
