Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T00:49:02.317Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The construction of national musical identities by Greek Cypriot primary school children – implications for the Cyprus music education system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2007

Avra Pieridou-Skoutella
Avra Pieridou-Skoutella*
Affiliation:
Arte Music Academy, Leonidou 34-36, 1097, Nicosia, Cyprusavraps@spidernet.com.cy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Greek Cypriot elementary school children in urban and rural areas of the Republic of Cyprus, the author describes and analyses the ways in which national musical identity is constructed in and out of school in connection with Cypriot traditional music. Findings reveal the development of fluid and often insecure, ambiguous and contradictory national musical identities as a result of the ideological messages children receive from their musical enculturation contexts. In addition public music education not only fails to assist pupils to become familiar with the tradition's inherent meanings and processes of creation and performance, but enhances children's contradictory ideological understanding and construction of an ambiguous national musical identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Music Education , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 251 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anoyianakis, F. (1988) Music in Cyprus – Popular Music. Nafplion, Greece: Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation, Ministry of Culture and Science.Google Scholar
Argyrou, V. (1996) Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean. The Wedding as a Symbolic Struggle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baily, J. (1994) ‘The role of music in the creation of an Afghan national identity, 1923–1973’, in Stokes, M. (Ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music. The Musical Construction of a Place (pp. 45–60). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. (1981) ‘Discourse in the novel’, in Holquist, M. (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (pp. 259–422). Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, A. (2000) Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Blacking, J. (1967) Venda Children's Songs. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Blacking, J. (1973) How Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Blacking, J. (1987) A Commonsense View of All Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bohlman, P. V. (1993) ‘Of Yekkes and Chamber Music in Israel: Ethnomusicological meaning in Western Music History’, in Blum, S., Bohlman, P. V. & Neuman, D. M. (Eds.), Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History (pp. 254–67). Champagne: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Cassia, P. S. (2000) ‘Eroticising discoveries and extraordinary experience: “traditional” music, modernity, and nostalgia in Malta and other Mediterranean societies’, Ethnomusicology, 44 (2), 281–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christodoulou, M. & Ioannides, C. (1987) Cypriot Folk Songs. Nicosia: Zavallis Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. (1994) ‘Identity, Place and the “Liverpool Sound”’, in Stokes, M. (Ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music. The Musical Construction of a Place (pp. 117–34). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. (1998) ‘Sounding out the city: music and the sensuous production of place’, in Leyshon, A., Matless, D. & Revill, G. (Eds.), The place of music (pp. 269–90). New York: Guildford Press.Google Scholar
Connell, J. & Gibson, C. (2003) Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dawe, K. (2000) ‘Roots music in the global village: Cretan ways of dealing with the world at large’, The World of Music, 42 (3), 47–66.Google Scholar
Dawe, K. (2003) ‘Between East and West: Contemporary grooves in Greek popular music (c. 1990–2000)’, in Plastino, G. (Ed.), Mediterranean Mosaics. Popular Music and Global Sounds (pp. 221–40). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
De Vos, G. (1995) ‘Concepts of ethnic identity’, in De Vos, G. & Romanucci-Ross, L. (Eds.), Ethnic Identity. London: Sage, AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Frith, S. (1996) ‘Music and Identity’, in Hall, S. & Du Gay, P. (Eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 108–27). London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3–30). New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gellner, E. (1994) Encounters with Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Glover, J. (1990) ‘Understanding children's musical understanding’, British Journal of Music Education, 7 (3), 257–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, L. (1988) Music on Deaf Ears. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Green, L. (1999) ‘Research in the sociology of music education: some introductory concepts’, Music Education Research, 1 (2), 159–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, S. (1992) ‘The question of cultural identity’, in Hall, S., Held, D. & McGrew, T. (Eds.), Modernity and its Futures (pp. 273–326). Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, D. J., Miell, D. & MacDonald, R. A. R. (2001) ‘What are musical identities, and why are they important?’, In Hargreaves, D. J., Miell, D. & MacDonald, R. A. R. (Eds.), Musical Identities (pp. 1–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, M. (1982, 1986) Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. New York: Pella.Google Scholar
Hutchby, I. & Moran-Ellis, J. (1998) ‘Situating children's Social Competence’, in Hutchby, I. & Moran-Ellis, J. (Eds.), Children and Social Competence (pp. 7–26). London: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
James, A. & Prout, A. (1990/1997) ‘A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems’, in James, A. & Prout, A. (Eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (pp. 7–33). London: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Karoulla-Vrikkis, D. (1991) ‘The language of the Greek Cypriots today: a revelation of an identity crisis?’, The Cyprus Review, 3 (1), 42–58.Google Scholar
King, A. (1995) ‘The times and spaces of modernity (or who needs postmodernism?)’ in Featherstone, M., Lash, S. & Robertson, R. (Eds.), Global Modernities (pp. 108–123). London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kirshenblatt-Ginbelt, B. (1995) ‘Theorizing heritage’, Ethnomusicology, 39 (3), 367–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kisliuk, M. (1997) ‘(Un)doing fieldwork: sharing songs, sharing lives’, in Barz, G. F. & Cooley, T. J. (Eds.), Shadows in the Field. New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (pp. 23–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Malm, K. & Wallis, R. (1992) Media Policy and Music Activity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education and Culture (1996) Curriculum Framework for Primary Education. Nicosia: Department of Primary Education.Google Scholar
Morley, D. & Robins, K. (1995) Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Negus, K. (1996) ‘Globalisation and the music of the public spheres’, in Braman, S. & Sreberny-Mohammadi, A. (Eds.), Globalisation, Communication and Transnational Civil Society (pp. 179–95). Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.Google Scholar
Nettl, B. (1985) The Western Impact on World Music. New York: Schirmer Books.Google Scholar
Papageorgiou, F. T. (1997) ‘Popular music and the music industry in Greece’, in Ewbank, A. J. & Papageorgiou, F. T. (Eds.), Whose Master's Voice? The Development of Popular Music in Thirteen Cultures (pp. 67–87). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Pieridou, A. (2006) The construction of musical identities by Greek Cypriot school children. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Institute of Education, University of London.Google Scholar
Rice, T. (1997) ‘Toward a mediation of field methods and field experience in ethnomusicology’, in Barz, G. F. & Cooley, T. J. (Eds.), Shadows in the Field. New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (pp. 101–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Robins, K. (1996) ‘Interrupting identities’, in Hall, S. & Du Gay, P. (Eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity (pp. 61–86). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Spyrou, S. (2001) ‘Being one and more than one: Greek Cypriot children and ethnic identity in the flow of everyday life’, Disclosure, 10 (2), 73–94.Google Scholar
Stokes, M. (1994) ‘Introduction: ethnicity, identity and music’, in Stokes, M. (Ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music. The musical construction of a place (pp. 1–27). Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Titon, J. T. (1997) ‘Knowing fieldwork’, in Barz, G. F. & Cooley, T. J. (Eds.), Shadows in the field. New perspectives for fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (pp. 87–100). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, J. (1996) ‘Cultural globalisation: placing and displacing the West’, The European Journal of Development Research, 8, 22–35.Google Scholar
Van Manen, J. (1990) Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Ontario: Althouse.Google Scholar
Young, S. (1995) ‘Listening to the music of early childhood’, British Journal of Music Education, 12 (2), 51–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar