ABSTRACT
Music education scholars who have written about comprehensiveness in music education have sometimes described a wide range of musical interactions as music literacy. The comprehensive nature of the literacy-based concept of discourse—along with the movement among music education scholars to characterize a full range of music interactions as music literacy—points to the need for a comprehensive conception of music literacy. The opening words on the standards page of the national association for music education (NAfME) website are: The 2014 music standards are all about Music Literacy. The standards, written by teachers, teacher educators, and supervisors, emphasize conceptual understanding in areas that reflect the actual processes in which musicians engage. The NAfME statement suggests that music literacy comprises conceptual understandings that accompany artistic engagements, thus cultivating the "ability to carry out" the processes. This chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
