Engaging Musical Practices, edited by Suzanne L. Burton, has a wealth of great ideas for secondary general music. I particularly appreciate the blend of practical ideas, research, and theoretical issues brought out by the authors.
I wrote an endorsement for this book last fall, and just received a physical copy. The final product looks great, and both the topics and authors are top-notch. Rather than rehash the contents you should check it out yourself.
It is an honor and a pleasure to share the news that I will be a Faculty Fellow of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) for the 2012-2013 school year, joining six faculty members and a group of graduate students.
I will continue working on a book project related to the twin revolutions of sound recording and digital media from a pragmatic philosophical position. It is a delight to look forward to the sharing my work in the yearlong Fellows Seminar, receiving an extra research funds allocation, and enjoying a teaching release for spring 2013.
I’ve been sharing with friends and colleagues a wonderful article from cultural studies by Ted Striphas, “Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing.” I’ve gotten enough feedback, including a great discussion in our doctoral seminar at Illinois, that I thought I’d mention it here (if you’re within an institution that subscribes to T&F journals, you might have access here, otherwise, there’s a free version here). And a tip of the hat to Super Bon!, where I learned of the Striphas piece.
I wanted to see if some of the points he made held true for music education. Google scholar now creates journal ranks, and here are the top five for music education (retrieved early April, and which are not surprising):
Now, let’s look at some of the points Striphas makes about journals in cultural studies and see if they hold true for these journals. This isn’t a complete examination, but enough to get the conversation started.
A Rising Oligopoly
Striphas claims that we’re on our way to an oligopoly, with a just few publishers holding most of the power despite more journals overall. In part this comes from the need for more digital access has accelerated the move to larger publishers:
“Confronted with this dilemma, some scholarly societies have opted to make a devil’s bargain. They have begun outsourcing the business and production aspects of their journals to large, for-profit corporate publishers—often the very same companies whose business practices have pressured them to contemplate outsourcing in the first place” (p. 11).
Of course, JRME and the rest of the MENC publications are now handled by Sage and R&L. IJME also moved to Sage, likely for the reasons Striphas outlines. In other words, ten years ago 80% of these journals were published by non-profits, now 40% are. Striphas’ claim seems to have merit, even with just a quick look at one list of top journals.
Journal Pricing
“The implication, then, is fairly clear: big publishers charge more for their journals because they can charge more” (p. 13). How does this hold for music education journals? Well, only BJME and BCRME are published by not-for profit or non-profit presses, the rest are for profit. Here’s the breakdown:
The average subscription price (print + electronic) for the for-profit journals is $517.33 per year, whereas for the non-profit the average is $203.00 per year. So, the for-profit journals charge just over 250% the cost of the non-profit, and I suppose there’s warrant for the assertion that they do so because they can. You may also, like me, be shocked at the high prices for institutions to subscribe to some of these journals—or that an issue of IJME costs 6.5 times more than an issue of BCRME—which is one indication of the degree to which scholars are insulated from many of the costs of the higher education system.
Alienation
On the personal side, I’ve experienced some of the alienation described (mostly, losing rights when you publish, often without much sense of the rights being signed away). On the upside, I’ve had some good experiences attaching the CIC Author’s Addendum to contracts for several publications.
Conversations about the politics of journal publishing are worth having with graduate students, and Striphas’ piece is a great place to start the conversation off with some of the big issues laid out sensibly. It also relates to issues of intellectual property generally.
I will present this week at the National Association for Music Education conference, part of the Philosophy Special Research Interest Group. As the theme is media, my initial five-minute allotment will be filled by playing the following video, which will help to set up the live discussion.
As I talk about the musical recordings I made, it is only fair that I share one, in this case the multi-track version of Woody Guthrie’s “Car Song” (which despite it’s acoustic patina includes 5 audio tracks, multiple edits, a baby sample from another recording, reverb, EQ, compression, and tons of automation as well as a bit of pitch-correction in the upright bass):
Music Education Research has just published an article of mine on creative rights, “From compliance to creative rights in music education: rethinking intellectual property in the age of new media.”
In the article, I discuss changes in creativity, content, and culture and how they change the ecology of copyright. The compliance approach to copyright is critiqued, and I present an alternative approach that builds from a the creative rights of the student.
As my students know, the article represents the culmination of many years of work (and see my 2010 CITES lecture and Idea Bank piece from Music Educators Journal for related content).
I recently visited Northwestern University, where I shared a paper with the famed doctoral seminar at CSEME. The paper, “Ubiquitous music learning in a postperformance word” is my contribution to The place of music in the 21st century: The one hundred-eleventh 2012 NSSE yearbook (forthcoming).
It was truly a pleasure to meet everyone, discuss my work, and interact with the CSEME seminar. Of course, it was also a special honor to share and discuss my ideas with Bennett Reimer. Special enough for a photo:
Postmarks is a newsletter that goes to friends and parents of currently enrolled UIUC students. The spring 2012 issue has a wonderful short piece on Designing Musical Experiences/the Homebrew Ukulele Union. The author, Dusty Rhodes, really gets the ideas of the class just right, and I appreciate her focus on students and their experience: http://news.illinois.edu/postmarks/spring_2012/ukulele.html
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