ABSTRACT
Using culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017) as a framework, this chapter will present culturally sustaining music pedagogy as a new theoretical framework with which to approach music teaching and learning from an equitable, justice-seeking, culturally affirming vantage point. This framework calls for a threefold approach to equitizing music education spaces: 1) dismantling, 2) expanding, and 3) embracing. The first step is to dismantle harmful, normalized practices that because of their assumed universality are invisible to those who are privileged by them. For students whose cultures are not recognized within a Eurocentric epistemology, to be given the opportunity to fully participate in the music classroom, it is essential that these practices be uncovered and dismantled. Second, culturally sustaining music pedagogy calls for an expansion of current music education practices to embrace non-Eurocentric musical epistemologies. This expansion must reach beyond previous attempts which merely expanded repertoire and curriculum to account for students’ musical worldviews. Lastly, culturally sustaining music pedagogy requires an embracing of non-Eurocentric epistemologies as valuable entities within their own frameworks rather than viewing them through a Eurocentric lens. This requires a re-defining of musical “standards” to recognize diverse musical epistemologies.
