ABSTRACT
In 1967, secretary-general of ISME Egon Kraus challenged music educators to become multicultural in their perspective, a challenge spurred on by the Tanglewood Symposium. Music educators in the United States have long been interested in the musics of other cultures. Often they have learned about these musics and how to implement them in the classroom through the pages of the Music Educators Journal (MEJ). The MEJ has covered multicultural perspectives in music through its articles, special issues, book reviews, and reports from MENC conferences and symposia. A study of the MEJ from 1967 to 1992 revealed the growth of multicultural music education. During the 1970s, a greater depth of interest in, and knowledge about, world musics developed. Throughout the 1980s, this initial interest grew steadily into a need for methods and materials for the implementation of multicultural music studies in the classroom, as did the need for teacher training in these musics. A formal declaration of commitment to multicultural music education was adopted at the MENC Multicultural Symposium in 1990, leading to a broad world perspective for music education. The three MEJ special focus issues on multicultural music education epitomized each of these growth areas.
