ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines strategies co-developed (by a community music school and a York University research unit) in order to explore ways of integrating pan-African music repertoires (PAM) in the school's programmes from 2018 to 2021, and argues to improve representation, specifically for learners of African descent, is to rethink repertoire and to diversify pedagogical approaches. Teachers who require or prefer to use notation in their classes will quickly discover that coverage of PAM repertoires in the catalogue of the major sheet music publishers is not consistent. Given the current prominence of the djembe and steel pans in music education, searching for PAM repertoire by instrumentation yields significant results. Although the scholarship represents a positive contribution to musicology and to music education, the testimony of Canadian minority-ethnic musicians and students themselves is still too often absent. The chapter takes a similarly multidirectional approach to examine how music curricula can be diversified and representation improved for learners of African descent.
