ABSTRACT
The bringing together of enterprise, vocational and creative education was an obvious neo-liberalization of the education system and there was no shortage of enthusiastic advocates spinning and glossing music education as a commodity. Bowman writing from North America about a legitimation crisis within music education argues that music education has slipped into a state of nihilism, having little or no regard to purpose, intention or value. However, the movement was interrupted by a call to account as a new economic order slid into being, Hobsbawm's landslide into an unstable international state, and an age of crisis. As globalization progressed, national identity and social cohesion came under threat and music education as a form of cultural education began to take shape in collusion with government social policy. But by now artistic culture as well as cultures in general had become liquid and unstable.
