Ethno Music Gatherings: Pedagogy, Experience, Impact(Music, Community, and Education)

A close look at a long-running international music program. This book presents key findings from a four-year project that sought to understand Ethno, an organized residential folk, world, and traditional music program for young people ranging in age from eighteen to thirty. First held in Sweden in 1990, Ethno now hosts gatherings in more than forty countries. The authors examine the complexity of an Ethno music experience with three focuses: pedagogy and professional development, participant experience, and impact beyond the gathering. Drawing on data from participant observations, interviews, social media analysis, onsite and video observations, surveys, and questionnaires, the authors ask critical questions concerning Ethno's history, ethos, pedagogy, and philosophical ideals. Considering its history and current practices, the following themes are explored: non-formal music making, personal authenticity, holistic praxis, musical possible selves, intercultural music exchange, sustainability, social media engagement, song sharing, and future practices. As a collection of integrated thought, the book's purpose is to illuminate new understandings of what Ethno does and in so doing present synergies and divergencies with the wider field of music education.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Magnus Bäckström Framing Ethno World & Ethno Research Sarah-Jane Gibson and Lee Higgins Ethno pedagogy: Valuing one another through experiential learning Andrea Creech, Maria Varvarigou, Lisa Lorenzino, and Ana Coric Playing with Tradition: Personal Authenticity and Discourses of Traditional Music-Making at Ethno World Gatherings Laura Risk and Keegan Manson-Curry Music Making as Holistic Praxis Dave Camlin and Helena Reis Ethno World as a site for developing and practising musical possible selves Maria Varvarigou, Andrea Creech, Lisa Lorenzino, and Ana Čorić Marvelling at the Ethnoverse: Intercultural Learning through Traditional Music Roger Mantie and Pedro Tironi Carbon Footprints and Intercultural Exchange: Ethno as Sustainable Practice Sarah-Jane Gibson Ethno Online: An Analysis of Social Media Engagement on Facebook Roger Mantie Sharing songs, shaping community: Revitalizing time-honored pedagogies at EthnoUSA Huib Schippers Reconceptualizing Ethno? Perceptions of the Ethno Gatherings in Bahia, Malawi, and the Solomon Islands Sarah-Jane Gibson  

About the Author :
Sarah-Jane Gibson is an ethnomusicologist who completed post-doctoral research into the Ethno programme in December 2022. She recently published her first monograph called Community Choirs in Northern Ireland: Re-imagining identity through singing. (July, 2023) which is based on her PhD research, completed in 2018 . Sarah-Jane has chapters forthcoming in ‘Teaching music Performance in Higher Education: exploring the potential of artistic research’ and the ‘Routledge Companion to Applied Musicology’. She regularly presents her research at international conferences, most recently being in November 2022 at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference in New Orleans where she spoke about Carbon Footprints and Sustainable Music practices. Sarah-Jane is also a singer, pianist and choral conductor. She has a background in music education having taught the music curriculum in Primary and Secondary schools in South Africa, the United States and England. She currently works as a music lecturer at York St John University, UK and is musical director for the Stamford Bridge Singers. Professor Lee Higgins is the Director of the International Centre of Community Music based at York St John University, UK. He was the President of ISME (2016-2018) and the senior editor for the International Journal of Community Music (2007-2021). He was author of Community Music: In Theory and in Practice (2012, OUP), Thinking Community Music (2024, OUP), co-author of Engagement in Community Music (2017, Routledge) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Community Music (2018).