The Burmese arched harp, known as "Saung Gauk," is the national icon of the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar (once called Burma). It is both ancient and contemporary, and its music frequently carries stories that are threaded with long-standing philosophical principles of the Burmese. The music of the Saung Gauk consists of five…

Students with disabilities (SWDs) in the United States have a right to the least restrictive learning environment as enshrined in federal law. Until recently, conceptions about educating SWDs have drawn from medical models of disability (i.e., that the student must be accommodated to interact with the environment) rather than a social model of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate secondary instrumental music education in rural Mississippi. This descriptive study investigated the experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that rural instrumental music educators ("N" = 58) held about their schools, students, and communities. Furthermore, we examined how…

Rawlings recommended that music teachers should select pieces for large-ensemble adjudicated events that not only challenge student musicians but also help ensure student success and promote a positive experience preparing for and participating in the event. Ideally, the selections should balance the strengths of the ensemble with the challenges…

Bomba is an emblematic Puerto Rican musical genre that emerged 400 years ago from the colonial plantations where West African slaves and their descendants worked. It remains one of the most popular forms of folk music on the island and serves as significant evidence of its rich African heritage. This article explores the main components of bomba…

Commodore Perry and his "Black Ships" opened Japanese harbors for foreign shipping in 1853 and 1854. Music was important for this Japan Expedition that obtained a treaty between the United States and Japan. Bands and singers performed music for parades, impressive ceremonies, religious services, and entertainment for the sailors and…

A priority of music educators across the globe continues to be the incorporation of music from various cultures into the classroom. In this article, the term "authenticity" is introduced as it applies to music education. Authentic music teaching experiences for use in the classroom from the West African Ewe music, Cuban cha-cha-chá, and…

Intonation is one of the most challenging performance elements for developing wind instrumentalists. There is a need to provide in-service band directors with evidence-based instructional strategies that can be used when teaching their students to perform with accurate intonation. The purposes of this research-to-resource article are to provide…

Group improvisation encourages students to improvise in a collective setting to build confidence in their individual and group improvisational skills. In this article, I describe group improvisation methods that offer an accessible entry into creative music-making for learners in secondary school instrumental ensembles. Instructional…

This article focuses on a particular arena of creative practice: music students' largely sonic experience of Otherness through world music ensemble performance of klezmer (music with its roots in the weddings and other social occasions of mostly Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews in eastern and central Europe). Having briefly introduced klezmer, we…

When a new topic is introduced in the curriculum, teachers seek various ways to teach students the related concepts. For the novel topic 'materials' in the revised Dutch curriculum, I developed an experiment in which students determine Young's modulus using a guitar string. The experiment not only covers several concepts related to 'materials' it…

There are many factors that influence the ability to play with accurate intonation, and this extending-the-discussion article provides contextual information and suggested teaching strategies for helping students develop such abilities. This Part 2 article describes a series of music activities and teaching strategies that can allow teachers to be…

The aim of this paper is to provide physics teachers and physics students with interdisciplinary cultural and scientific related content. The "dombra" is on the one hand a cultural symbol of Kazakhstan with a long tradition. On the other hand, the dombra as a musical instrument is an object of interest in acoustics. The topic can lead to…

In the third segment of the series, we explore general music behaviors and techniques that may be incorporated into the secondary performing ensemble in order to provide enrichment and depth to performance-focused instruction. Using research-based evidence and ensemble experience in both the choral and instrumental settings, we will discuss…

Conservatoires train musicians to high levels of proficiency in performance and other 'principal study' disciplines, but often, teaching is perceived as a second-class profession, and little is known about how music students learn to facilitate music making in others. Yet, conservatoires have a responsibility to contribute to the development of…