The role of negative emotions in learning music: qualitative understanding of Australian undergraduate students’ listening experience of unfamiliar music

Abstract

This paper examines the experience and role of negative emotions in facilitating university students’ learning in world music courses. Based on a review of literature in music psychology and music education, we posit that negative emotions can engender a meaningful learning context. In this project conducted in an Australian university, we created a condition in which students were engaged in repeated listening to recordings of music from cultures different from their own, which they reported as sounding “unpleasant.” We then analysed how they overcame emotional responses through a listening exercise. The findings suggest that the students developed enhanced motivation and cognitive reflection by facing their own negative emotions through repeated listening. The article finishes with a discussion about the positive side of negative emotions and the negative side of positive emotions as they relate to music education.

Introduction

When listening to this song for the first time I felt that the sounds created by the trumpets imitated the sound of mosquitoes flying close to someone’s ear. [Sofia, diary1]

It reminded me of someone sounding a high pitched, harmonised version of a blow horn into the ear of someone with a sound-sensitive migraine or a really large, loud mosquito that keeps buzzing around your head but you can’t get rid of it. [Carla, diary2]

These are undergraduate music students’ responses to a recording of Tibetan Buddhist music. As we taught undergraduate world music courses, we noted that students are often overwhelmed by a wide range of emotions caused by unfamiliar sounds and musical expressions. We then explored the experience and role of negative feelings and emotions in facilitating university students’ learning of world music.

Emotion is a significant part of musical experience and the reason many people are drawn to listening to music (Juslin & Laukka, 2004). Whether it is induced or perceived emotion (Lundqvist et al., 2009), music is experienced intrinsically and extrinsically as feelings and emotions (Reimer, 2004; Sloboda, 1999, 2005). In everyday contexts, people tend to listen to music they enjoy that produces positive emotions (Woody & Burns, 2001). Juslin and Zentner (2001–2002) observed that positive emotions dominate the musical experience, a situation that is not necessarily the case in non-musical scenarios.

Although much of the focus in music education and music psychology research has been on the generation of positive emotions, negative emotions have also been explored (Garrido & Schubert, 2011; Levinson, 1996), especially with regard to pleasurable sadness in music (Juslin, 2016; Kawakami et al., 2013; Sachs, Damasio, & Habibi, 2015; Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017). Schubert (1996) and Davies (1997) explicated the mechanism for the paradox of negative emotions in music that leads to pleasure: The dichotomy is resolved through the process of “dissociation” of negative emotions and “absorption” into pleasure (Garrido & Schubert, 2011). However, when the gap between the listener’s musical expectations and their frame of reference for listening is especially large (such as when listening to unfamiliar genres of music), dissociation or absorption does not readily occur. This was the case with those students who responded to Tibetan Buddhist music earlier as “annoying mosquitos that you cannot get rid of.” Schubert (1996) agreed that dissociation and absorption could only happen when the experienced negative emotions are not real but aesthetic. In contrast, Juslin (2016) hypothesised that listeners experience genuine emotion and pleasure whilst listening to music (see also Lundqvist et al., 2009). Either way, negative emotions that cause displeasure are yet to be explored in music. There is thus a need to explore the correlation between negative emotions and musical displeasure, especially in educational settings, since students inevitably face a variety of music, beyond their preferred listening choices, that may arouse negative emotions.

Music education research has followed the body of literature that focuses on the “liking” of music. For example, music preference research confirmed the link between positive emotions and musical preference (North & Hargreaves, 1995, 1997; Ritossa & Rickard, 2004). Whilst acknowledging that emotion plays a significant role, StGeorge, Holbrook, and Cantwell (2014) argued that liking the music is the decisive factor affecting students’ sustainable involvement in music learning. Thus, Juslin and Zentner (2001–2002) suggested that music education research should focus on “positive” emotions in music, since these can help us understand why people are drawn to music (and learning music). Adversely, negative emotions were assumed to inhibit the students’ cultural understanding and appreciation of that music and are thus less educational. In the field of music education, few scholars have acknowledged negative emotions in a positive light. Hallam (2010) observed that not all negative emotions lead to discouragement and an avoidance of learning: If students are armed with sufficiently strong musical identities, they can overcome the negative experience when given both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. On the whole, however, most studies see negative emotions as something to avoid, rather than as representing potential educational opportunities.

In contrast, the potential of negative emotions has been noted and acknowledged in psychology. The editor of The Positive Side of Negative Emotions (Parrott, 2014) summarised the positive effects of negative emotions as enhancing motivation, behaviour, cognition, as well as improving social interactions and relationships. The psychology of good and bad events explains the relative power of negative emotions. In their extensive review of psychological studies, Baumeister, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001) argued that the greater power of bad over good experiences is the result of our evolutionary history in which organisms became more sensitive to such events (e.g., pain vs. pleasure) as a means of increasing their prospects for survival. The authors further highlighted a number of studies that proved that people are better able to recall the source of bad, rather than good, information. Whilst people tend to correctly identify the order of individual stimuli constituting a bad experience, stimuli that make up a positive experience are often mixed. Participants in Fiske’s study (1980) were proved to spend a longer time and pay more attention to bad than good acts when forming an impression upon viewing a photograph. There were more words for negative emotions than positive emotions (Averill, 1980). Van Goozen and Frijda (1993) revealed that Europeans and Canadians chose more words associated with negative emotions than those for positive emotions, suggesting that the former was more significant than the latter in everyday contexts.

Baumeister, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001) further argued that negative emotions facilitate better cognitive processing. People engaged in more thinking and reasoning about bad than good events, similarly devoting more effort and thought to those goals that were “blocked” than to those that were easily achieved. This is because negative emotions push them to create a new plan or a new goal; faced with failure, they develop better cognitive tools to overcome its negative impacts. Further suggesting that people learn more quickly from bad than good events, these studies support the view that negative emotions are potentially useful and may constitute meaningful learning opportunities.

More recently, the role of negative emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, and jealousy) in providing beneficial motivations has been noted (Behrendt & Ben-Ari, 2012; Lindsay-Hartz, de Rivera, & Mascolo, 1995; Henniger & Harris, 2014). Baumeister, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001) explained that negative emotions increase motivation to overcome constraints. Generally, people set a goal based on their vision of the “desired” self. According to their review, however, the vision of the “undesired” self is a more powerful motivator. Applied in educational contexts, students’ learning goals are often shaped by their views regarding what they do not want to be as well as what they want to be. The positive power of negative emotions in enhancing students’ motivation of learning thus serves as a theoretical framework in this study.

How can we transform negative emotions into an educational opportunity? For the majority of our students, world music is an unfamiliar genre. Previous studies have suggested that the extent to which people like music is influenced by its degree of familiarity (North & Hargreaves, 1995). Familiarity with a musical style correlates with a preference for music of the same style (Demorest & Schultz, 2004; Fung, 1994, 1996). Many studies suggest that exposure leads to increased preference (e.g., Shehan, 1986; Siebenaler, 1999). One’s preference for a certain type of music is therefore influenced largely by exposure and repeated listening to the sounds and expressions of that music. Decades ago, Shehan (1986) proposed that training with guided instruction could lead to an increased preference of world music. Likewise, Heingartner and Hall (1974) suggested that exposure to recordings of unfamiliar music (e.g., Pakistani music) repeatedly (at least 8 times) could increase affective responses. More recently, Margulis (2013) has underscored the role of repeated listening in appreciating music, especially that which is unfamiliar to the listener. According to her research, repeated listening may even allow randomly sequenced notes to be heard as music. Although this particular claim probably requires further investigation ¹ , such studies suggest that one’s musical preferences are not fixed but are, instead, malleable.

The premise of this study is that initial impressions of unfamiliar music change through exposure, enculturation, and training. Educational theories, especially constructivist theory, underscore this idea of transformation of perception (Jackson, 2000). Dewey (1934–1980) stressed that aesthetic experience facilitates perception beyond mere recognition. Recognition does not question and challenge, but instead leads to withdrawal and surrender to previously formed images, schemes and assumptions. For Dewey, musical appreciation is a process of recreating and renewing perception. Growth, according to him, is the result of a continuity of experiences. One experience leads to another. Past experiences are transformed and modified through newly added meanings. He also reiterated the role of emotions and feelings. Meaningful learning, gained through transformative experience infused with emotions, including those that are both negative and positive, is achieved by the co-occurrence of affective and cognitive processes (Schutz et al., 2006). Compared to the number of studies examining the role of affect in education (Rowe, Fitness, & Wood, 2013) and the integration of affect and cognition (Linnenbrink, 2006), few studies have researched the role of negative emotions within the same context.

We use the term “world music” in this paper because it is a common term to describe university-level courses about music of other cultures. It refers to a wide variety and range of music, including folk and ethnic music (Bohlman, 2002), global pop (Taylor, 1997), cultural hybrids (Hebert, 2008; Lizeray & Lum, 2018) and community music (Bartleet et al., 2009; Higgins, 2012; Veblen et al., 2013). In many higher education institutions, world music has also become a field of general education in its own right (Nettl, 2010). World music is typically taught in higher education institutions by ethnomusicologists, many of whom have expressed a variety of concerns, including those involving pedagogies (Krüger, 2011; Marcus & Solís, 2004), the importance of performance knowledge (Solís, 2004), the positionality of teachers (Trimillos, 2004), cultural appropriation and authenticity (Harnish, Solís, & Witzleben, 2004; Schippers, 2010), coverage of cultures (Nettl, 2005) and textbook structure (Nettl, 2010). Although a number of ethnomusicologists’ reflections and narratives of teaching world music in higher education contexts exist, they are mostly concerned with “teacher” perspectives. Relatively unexplored are “student” experiences of learning unfamiliar music in world music courses. It is at the nexus of music education, music psychology, and ethnomusicology that this study has emerged.

We are aware of the problems associated with world music, many of which serve as a mechanism for “othering,” distancing “us” from “them” and further promoting the hegemony of European music (Thompson, 2002). In theory, world music refers to “all music, everywhere, and everything about it,” but in practice all too often means all but Western art music (Nettl, 2013, p. 37). World music as a marketing category also invites criticism, since it promotes the global homogenisation of diverse music as well as the demise of local cultures and music (Taylor, 2012; see also Connell & Gibson, 2004). These were all the foci of attention within the framework of the course.

Research context and questions

In this study, we explored students’ negative emotions and the ways in which these shaped their music learning experiences. Instead of focusing on students’ liking or initial reactions to world music, we examined their learning processes with the music they disliked. Based on the reviewed literature, we hypothesised that repeated listening would help them to mitigate their negative responses to unfamiliar music. Employing the principle of familiarisation through repeated listening, we examined the impact of exposure to, and acceptance of, world music.

This study is based on our experiences of co-teaching an undergraduate world music course in an Australian university, which we offered once a year. This course was aimed at non-specialist students and was open to any undergraduates without pre-requisite, though was frequently chosen by Bachelor of Music students focused on Western art music; it was also recommended in the course list for Music Education students, though was not focused on music education. We incorporated what we called repeated listening tasks within the framework of the course in order to facilitate students’ prolonged listening experience with the music. The textbook that we used (Miller & Shahriari, 2006) accompanied 2 CDs, which included 70 audio samples from a variety of regions, including Oceania, Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Mexico and North America. ² This textbook was chosen because its coverage of different cultures was felt to be most comprehensive (Nettl, 2010). We did not play the audio samples during the class time. However, we had two in-class listening tests. The students were asked to name the country/region where the music originated from and to describe features of the music upon listening to a recording.

In another assignment, students were asked to select three recordings from the CDs, including at least one recording that they felt most uncomfortable listening to and listen to them throughout the semester. While students’ selections of favorite pieces varied, ranging stylistically from Mariachi to Carnatic music, their choices of samples they disliked were similar. Examples of such music were Korean P’ansori, Tibetan Buddhist music and Chinese opera. The students were then asked to write a reflective journal on their listening experiences of the three recordings, three times during the course of the semester, namely, in the third, seventh and eleventh week. They were specifically asked to follow the aural analysis listening guideline in the textbook and focus on their awareness of the musical characteristics and their listening habits. The aural analysis listening guideline specified the following:

Our recommendation is to listen first through the entire example without the guide, just to get a First Impression without concern over the details of the music. After reading the Aural Analysis for the example, listen again with the guide and take note of each Listening Focus description. You may have to start/stop and rewind the example several times to hear each item. That’s a good thing! It means you are actively listening to the music.” (Miller & Shahriari, 2006, p. xvii)

The textbook contains 70 aural analysis listening exercises, similar to the “attentive listening” examples proposed by Campbell (2004). Students were asked to refer to the guideline before writing their reflective journals.

The repeated listening exercises let the students engage with the pieces for a period of over 10 weeks, providing them with a number of challenges: How did they come to terms with the unfamiliar sounds of world music through repeated listening? How did negative experiences facilitate their learning? In what ways did their awareness of the “undesired” self shape their motivation for learning?

Methodology

This project continued over a period of 3 years. The participants in this study (pseudonyms are used here) were undergraduate students who had never taken any world music course. Whilst most of them were music-major students, the course was also open to creative arts and humanities students. Each year we collected students’ reflective diaries, a procedure which provided us with rich data for understanding the trajectory of their listening experiences. In the third year, we organised semi-structured interviews with the students, which were conducted by one of the authors who, whilst not involved in the course delivery, was familiar with world music. None of the course lecturers was present during the interviews. Twelve students (10 females, 2 males) volunteered to participate in the interview sessions, each lasting 20 to 45 min. Most of the interview participants were of European descent (Biddle, Khoo, & Taylor, 2015), with one having mixed European-Asian background. There were a few exchange students from Hong Kong in the class during the 3-year period of the study, but their data were not included in this study. The total number of participants involved, including those who submitted diaries over the course of 3 years was 52. Each diary consisted of two to three reflective journals. These journals indicated that these students’ exposure to world music was no more than casual listening of so-called “world music” in popular media, such as African music in The Lion King (Jordan, 2015).

All the collected data used for this study were qualitative in nature (Matsunobu & Bresler, 2014). During the interviews, we asked the participants questions based on their listening diaries. We analysed their diaries before the interview sessions, specifically looking at how they overcame the emotional challenges of listening to certain kinds of music. For example, the interviewer might initiate the conversation by asking: “You mentioned in your diary that you couldn’t relate to Tibetan music. Can you tell me what it was about Tibetan music that you found difficult to relate to?”; “You mentioned that you listened to the recording many times. Can you describe your experience of listening to it repeatedly?” By asking these questions, we triangulated the data between the listening diaries and interview data. We were also interested in understanding and improving the quality of the course, so we asked questions relevant to its general delivery. Such questions included: “What do you think about the impact of guest performers and teachers?”; “Did you participate in the instrument making session? If so, what was your impression of making indigenous instruments by yourself?”

Two voice recorders were used to record interviews. Transcribed data were sent to the participants for member checking. Interview transcripts and listening diaries were coded and independently verified by both co-authors, as well as being analysed manually for emergent themes (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). Initial stages generated binary codes, such as “liking/disliking,” “open-mind/close-mind,” “respect/discrimination” and “acceptance/rejection.” It was only after the data were analysed that the importance of these themes emerged. In other words, we did not try to direct students’ views as a means of benefitting this study by addressing and emphasising them during the lectures. However, it is also fair to point out that our values and experiences in ethnomusicology, composition and intercultural music education influenced students’ experiences of the course, regardless of how neutral we tried to be. After scrutiny and further analysis, the data were organised into three main themes, including motivation of learning, cognitive process, and habits of listening. The submitted listening diaries, along with interview data, indicated that the students challenged their own frames of musical understanding through repeated listening over a period of time.

In retrospect, the use of both diary and interview methods constituted an appropriate mixture. As suggested by Lamont and Webb (2009), diary methods capture students’ progressive understanding of music and fluctuations of their musical preferences over time, whilst interviews reveal their motivations and narratives in retrospective accounts.

Results

Many students found it hard to appreciate unfamiliar music from cultures other than their own and expressed their initial responses to the recordings using negative terms, such as those underlined in the following extracts:

I could hardly believe that the random sounding notes played by the instrument conflicted so badly with the low voice, and that it was actually asserted as being correct. The instrument makes my teeth chatter and sets me on edge. [Sandy, interview1]

I [now] feel part of that culture [but] I didn’t at the start. I felt like it was like, “Ugh,” very strange to me, because I didn’t understand it…. Then I gradually started to understand it. [Pam, interview1]

When you first hear the pieces, they’re so completely different to what we’re used to in Western culture and everything. Like, it’s insane. I was just like, “this is disgusting,” the first time I heard it, you know? [Carla, interview1]

I cannot say whether I like it or not but I can settle with it and listen to it without cringing at the harsh tones and the dissonant sounds. [Kathy, diary2]

However, as can also be seen, some of the students eventually overcame these negative initial impressions. How did this happen? The data below highlight the positive power of negative emotions to enhance students’ motivation.

Motivation to study

As summarised earlier, a review of the literature sheds light on the notion of self-concept as shaping one’s motivation. Motivation for learning emanates from a vision of the “desired” self, as well as that of the “undesired” self. The latter can be a stronger motivator than the former. In this study, the students addressed their desired and undesired selves, using the term “open-mindedness.” For instance,

I like to think that I am an open-minded person…but when I first heard them, I thought “Oh, no, I don’t like it. Oh, I couldn’t really like it.” It just didn’t mesh with me very well. Then I listened to it again. [Pam, interview1]

Maybe I didn’t give myself enough credit at the start, and I actually do really appreciate that kind of music, if you know what I mean? I am appreciative of that because I wouldn’t want to be that person that isn’t open-minded in that way especially toward music. Musical prejudice is terrible. [Rachael, interview1]

The students associated having negative emotions towards the music of other cultures with being “closed-minded,” typically expressing the desire to reject such emotions. The fear of being a closed-minded person increased their motivation to listen to the recordings repeatedly and overcome their negative reactions. Sofia was one of those students:

The first time I listened to the group song from Kiribati I found that it did not appeal to me straight away. I found the nasal timbre of the vocalists unappealing…. I found it interesting that the first time I essentially did not allow myself the opportunity to actually listen to the piece. It was as if I went into listening to the piece with a closed mind, not willing to accept something different. By allowing myself the opportunity to listen to the piece a second time I went in with an open mind, willing to accept what I was hearing. [Sofia, diary1]

The underlying belief shared by Sofia and other students seemed to be that they must appreciate all kinds of music from all cultures. If they failed to appreciate them, they were discriminating against the cultures from which the music originated and were thus not being open-minded. The data suggest that having negative emotions challenged their self-concept as open-minded citizens. This led them to put in the additional effort necessary to familiarise themselves with the unheard sounds of world music.

Impact of repeated listening

The data below suggest that repeated listening created the space required for extended listening of the recordings. The students were urged to write listening diaries of the pieces that they could not relate to upon hearing them for the first time. Over the course of 10 weeks, especially prior to the submission of the three journals, the students listened to the recordings and wrote down their feelings about the music. This led them to linger over the pieces. Some students looked for other examples of the same musical genre on YouTube, trying to discover some clues that would lead to a better understanding of the music.

One of the themes that came up in the students’ diaries and interview data was that of “changes of initial impression.” For instance,

My perception of this piece [Korean P’ansori] has definitely changed…. At the beginning, after just hearing this song a few times, I didn’t want to hear it anymore, it wasn’t a pleasant sounding piece to me…. This example has really shown me that if I don’t understand or appreciate a certain piece of music, I should look up the history and background of the area of the world it is from. I think that if I hadn’t learnt more about this type of singing my perception definitely wouldn’t have changed. [Nicki, diary2]

I wouldn’t choose to listen to this type of music [Tibetan Buddhist music] as a personal choice. However, I think this piece shows the greatest change in my opinion and shows the importance of learning about a culture in order to understand the music. [Sandy, diary2]

“Delaying judgment” was another theme that appeared frequently.

In just that couple of months I listened to such a wide variety of music. In that two months, I’ve listened to more different types of music than I ever had in my life. Yeah, it really opened your musical eyes, in terms of really… It made me more open-minded, listening to other music. Not so quick to judge, and take the time to appreciate what’s special about it or unique. [Andrew, interview1]

After this experience, Andrew strongly believed that he should not make quick judgments about music. Later, he told us that this realisation prepared him for subsequent international travels. Josh echoed Andrew’s thoughts, emphasising the importance of repeated listening and spending time on each piece:

To overcome that, I just really needed to give it the time. Really listen to it and listen to it all the way through and listen to it well. You can’t listen to 10 seconds of it and then voice an opinion. I really have to just listen to it all the way through, and then you start to appreciate things that are new, yeah. The more I listen to it, the more I start to appreciate it [Josh, interview1].

Like Josh, many students underscored that initial impressions of the pieces should not have been their concern, as their opinions changed over time through extended listening. Sofia was another example.

It has only been within the past week that I have been willing to accept and open my mind to this piece. I believe that by persisting and listening to this piece over the period of time it has encouraged me to open my mind to all pieces, whether I initially like the piece or not. Without persisting to listen to this piece it may encourage me to not give other pieces a chance if I do not like what I hear the first time I listen to them [Sofia, diary2].

Most students responded positively to their learning experiences. Although the initial process was not always smooth, and the negative feelings often remained, the experience of overcoming their initial feelings gave them a sense of fulfillment and, in some cases, the conviction that listening to challenging pieces was, indeed, educational. Kathy expressed her realisation this way:

With all the pieces, I’ve grown to like some sections of each song. It’s been a very good listening experience and to monitor my like/dislike for it. I also believe that this is a very good exercise. To me, it made me think about what my initial aversion or liking to the song and how it affected me as a musician and my personal liking of music. [Kathy, diary2]

These students’ remarks corroborate the findings of Heingartner and Hall (1974), Shehan (1986) and Siebenaler (1999) in that exposure and training have the potential to change one’s preference of world music.

This does not mean that all students’ musical preferences changed throughout the course. Some explained that their initial judgement remained unchanged. Acknowledging, however, that simply “liking” a piece of music was not the goal of the course, they shared their learning process. For instance, Brian wrote the following in his journal:

I didn’t enjoy listening to the P’ansori example when I listened to the first time and I still don’t find it a pleasant listening experience. However I have found other examples of this genre that I like a lot better. Whilst searching I found a scene from Heung Boo-Ga which I found much easier to listen to. The difference between the example from the CD and the example I found is that the voice from Heung Boo-Ga sounds much less forced. In my previous post I said that the voice from the CD sounded clenched and strained and that was what sounded unpleasant. The scene from Heung Boo-Ga contains more drums and the singer performs with a more open sounding voice. Now that I’ve heard more examples of this genre of music I think I like it more than I did before. [Brian, diary 1]

As Brian indicated, it was not necessarily the act of listening per se but also understanding the socio-cultural context of music practice that helped them to overcome the listening challenges. The latter, in particular, helped them to explore multiple perspectives and approaches and reflect on their responses to the music. Mary mentioned this point clearly:

Well, one thing that really helped was when I read the description of what the music—like the background of the music and kind of what it was about. That helped me understand it, as well as listening to it. Both of those really helped me. [Mary, interview1]

Understanding music in context (Campbell, 2004) was an important focus of the course. We introduced Alan Merriam’s (1964) classical model of a three-level ethnomusicological approach: analysis of music’s sounds, musical behaviors and conceptualisation about music. This was also emphasised in the textbook.

Interestingly, some students indicated that the learning experience of world music transferred to other contexts. Throughout the course, they reported that they learned how to listen to music more patiently. They applied this skill to other situations in which they were also exposed to unfamiliar types of music, such as contemporary music. For instance, Sandy associated her encounter with unfamiliar music with the repeated listening task in the course:

I just have a much more open mind now. Like, before I went into this course, I wouldn’t even be able to sit through some of those pieces that we listened to. Some modern pieces today that are completely insane, like because we have Thursday concerts at 1:00, and some of the pieces that are played are just crazy. But I just sit there, and I just kind of try to understand it. I think that really came from the course. Yeah, because I know for the listening tasks, you kind of had to listen to all these pieces. So, just forcibly learning how to just listen to them. Yeah, it changed me. [Sandy, interview1]

Attending to the same piece of music over a period of time afforded the learners, like Sandy, the opportunity to linger over the sounds, to scrutinise their initial responses and to acquire additional knowledge about the music and its respective culture.

The students’ narratives suggest that they went through a transformation of perception through repeatedly listening to unfamiliar music.

It’s amazing how you can begin a course thinking ‘I don’t like this piece/song’ to saying ‘I respect and enjoy being challenged,’ which is my view of the course. [Joshua, diary3]

It was difficult at first to sort of be open minded, because you come in with this specific way of looking at music, and then when you come out it’s completely changed. [Kathy, interview1]

Transformation may not easily occur without repeated listening and extended engagement. As a point of reference, we also had conventional listening tests in each course to provide students with opportunities to memorise the characteristics of the music being targeted (e.g., From where does it originate? What instruments are used?). The listening tests helped them to focus on and understand the formal and cultural aspects of the music. For this purpose, they referred to the textbook and gained the relevant knowledge. However, the listening tests, just as with any other tests, were one-shot events and cognitively driven. By contrast, repeated listening enhanced students’ “perception” rather than “recognition,” to use Dewey’s expression. This process was confirmed in many students’ diaries, as previously revealed. The following description by Joshua of his experience further supports this observation:

The problem was my listening, not what I was hearing. One of the important lessons I have derived from this course is that initial impressions are unreliable; deeper acquaintance familiarizes the unknown, reveals depths initially unremarked, allows the experience of music in genres which initially seem unmusical. [Joshua, diary3]

As underscored by the students above, repeated listening encouraged them to reflect on the ways they listened to music and, in the process, becoming more aware of their listening habits.

Cognitive reflection

One may wonder what the results would have looked like had the students not been required to pick unfavorable, unfamiliar pieces, but were instead allowed to choose favourite pieces for repeated listening. When describing such works, the students frequently showed a tendency to put less effort into explicating their understanding of the music. Instead of analysing the way they listened, the focus of their reflection was often placed upon the piece itself. The entry in Ashley’s journal is typical:

My first impression of this piece [mariachi] was that I really enjoyed it. It is one of my favourite pieces on the CDs. It’s fun and funky and a real toe tapper. I really like the melody of this piece. The instrumentation of the piece was exciting too: all the different timbres melding together. I loved the little flourishes that the trumpet performed throughout this piece. [Ashley, diary1]

By way of comparison, her reflection on the piece she disliked was longer, the focus being firmly on the way she listened.

When I first listened to this piece [Aboriginal song] I found myself tuning out I just didn’t enjoy the overall sound of the piece and didn’t find it very interesting. Unfortunately I still I don’t have a great love for this song as I find the nasal quality of the song quite off putting…. I believe that this may be a result of being a singer and one who has a particular interest in the field of classical voice. I spend so much of my time trying to cultivate a pure, ringing, well rounded tone that I find it hard sometimes to enjoy singing that isn’t so, particularly when it’s almost the complete opposite. Furthermore, I like in music, many layers so that you can always hear something new, something that you didn’t hear the first time…. Lastly, I enjoy having something that I can sing along to or if it’s in a different language, something that I can hum along to. [Ashley, diary1]

Like Ashley, other students addressed the reasons for their negative emotions to the ‘unrelatable’ pieces, almost as if making an excuse. A sense of ‘shame’ for having such emotions led them to reflect on their listening habits.

Interestingly, they wrote in greater detail and amount about the recordings that they found displeasing, compared to those that they enjoyed. This was probably because they felt as if they needed to defend themselves and offer a reason for being closed-minded listeners, thereby supporting the finding of the aforementioned literature that negative emotions facilitate deeper cognitive reflection.

The students’ narratives further suggested that pleasing recordings did not necessarily lead to positive experiences. For instance, the following student described her experience of Mariachi music:

The more I listened to this track, the more the track began to irritate me. By the end of the 5 weeks, I basically gave up on it and I was almost excited to be rid of it. The happy partying nature of the music that attracted me to the music in the beginning ended up being the things that really started to grate on me in the end…. The resonating tonal quality and nasal timbre of the vocals become overly annoying the more I listened to the track…. The bright tonal colour of the brass instruments turned from something that attracted me to the music to something that I found a little irritating. [Carla, diary2]

Once again, Carla’s experience supports the view that initial responses towards music, be they positive or negative, change over time. Pleasing recordings are no more educational than displeasing recordings. The findings of this study substantiate the claim that repeated listening of displeasing recordings can facilitate students’ reflection on their listening habits and open their musical eyes.

Discussion

The positive side of negative emotions

The psychology of positive and negative emotions explains the mechanism of repeated listening to displeasing audio recordings. Students are normally quick to react when it comes to their favourite music. As the data in this study has shown, negative audio recordings disturbed their emotional equilibrium and challenged them to leave their comfort zones. Listening to such recordings forced them to change their listening strategy. For this to happen, the students needed to have a positive self-concept that they were open-minded. For them, the fear of being closed-minded and of being unable to accept musical expressions from other cultures was a driving force to listen more to those unfamiliar recordings. Through this process, they learned how to delay and avoid making quick judgments. As some students indicated, they learned that initial responses were not the determining factor for subsequent learning experiences. This supports Fung’s (2004) suggestion regarding teaching world music for pre-service and in-service teachers. He argued that “instructors [of music teacher education programmes] should be concerned about musical-analytical characteristics and emotions and feelings generated from the piece but not be too concerned about pre-service music educator’s familiarity with the pieces” (p. 41), a point often missing in music education literature.

We reflected on the conditions that enabled the students to remain engaged in the repeated listening task, despite the unfamiliar musical sounds. The approach was aligned with Dewey’s (1934–1980) philosophy of education, which suggested that educators should create the experiential conditions within which interaction between the students and objects can naturally occur. Dewey posited that an educational environment is a setting in which a subjective relationship with an object occurs, develops and even initiates conflict in a way to generate a tension. As a result of the tension, students seek to overcome the conflict and achieve equilibrium. As observed by Lindgren (as cited in Pringle, 2006), “One of the characteristics of successful learning is to produce tension and anxieties…. When learning really takes place, it means that there has been some change in the learner” (p. 154). Instead of eliminating the source of the tension, we created the conditions which forced the students to face it. Growth, for Dewey, is an outcome of a series of negotiations between the desires of the individual and the constraints of the environment. As stated by Pringle (2006), “Frustration and anxiety are not only inevitable in the process of growth and development but may be conducive to it, provided they are appropriate to the individual’s level of tolerance” (p. 154).

The findings of this study suggest that in order for negative emotions to be educational, students need to have a positive mindset as open-minded learners. Without such a mindset, they are at risk of surrendering their own learning and developing a negative attitude towards the music of others. As suggested by Baumeister, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001), learning goals are often shaped by a student’s self-concept of what he or she does not want to be. Unless students have a desire to be open-minded, the use of negative emotions may not transform itself into an educational tool. One of the implications of the study is that the desire to be open-minded leads to the development of a growth mindset (Dweck, 1999). Students who possess a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities to learn. When it comes to listening to music, open-minded learners put considerable effort into the task, thrive on attempting to overcome the emotional hurdles and try to expand their listening horizons. The findings of this study thus contribute to the discussion of self-theories of learning by highlighting the role of negative emotions in shaping one’s motivation.

The negative side of positive emotions

We also noted a sociological implication of studying unfamiliar music and overcoming negative emotions: namely, the degree to which it promotes understanding the values of ‘the other’, especially when these can be difficult to relate to. As documented in the literature, people normally choose and listen to familiar and favourite music for pleasure. Because of this tendency, music bonds and demarcates people whilst shaping their individual and collective identities (Bakagiannis & Tarrant, 2006; Hargreaves et al., 2002; Roy & Dowd, 2010; Russell, 1997; Zillmann & Gan, 1997). Thus, when people say, “I don’t like this music,” they might be simultaneously saying, “I do not relate to those people who like this music.” Emotions play a significant role in the process of this othering. A simple remark made by a student in this study reminds us of this process:

A friend of mine once got very mad at me for dismissing a song the first time I heard it, saying that I was too stubborn for deciding I didn’t like it so soon, and that good music needs to be listened to a few times so it can grow on you before you can make an assessment of it. At the time, I argued that if I didn’t like it the first time, why would I make myself listen to it again? Now I can see [after taking this course] the value in learning to appreciate certain kinds of music. [Jen, diary2]

This example suggests that studying world music and unfamiliar music, especially that which evokes negative emotions, is potentially educational. If we do not teach students how to overcome their negative reactions towards such music, the danger is that it will remain as a mechanism for “othering.” Thus, facing, admitting and overcoming negative emotions towards unfamiliar music should be a significant part of the music education process that can achieve intercultural understanding. Music education for university students and for all ages should venture into introducing unfamiliar sounds and unfamiliar music, and for facing the negative emotions caused by them.

The education literature today tends to overlook the power of negative emotions and, instead, focuses on those that are positive, the latter being assumed to be a determining factor affecting students’ learning motivation (Naude, van den Bergh, & Kruger, 2014; Schutz et al., 2006). For the same reason, teachers are often afraid to focus on music that students do not like for fear that they will develop a negative feelings towards it. A common narrative among such teachers is that students may laugh or giggle at unusual musical expressions and sounds. Negative emotions lead to a rejection of a culture and its people from which the music originates. It is in this context that “modified” examples of world music are employed in music lessons. Although the educational merit of using such musical examples is evident (Demorest & Schultz, 2004), that should not nullify the educational value of negative emotions as the latter can represent an entry point into an unfamiliar world.

Research on negative emotions and their educational value should be explored further in the light of findings in related fields. For instance, Kc, Staats, and Gino (2013) argued that medical practitioners learn better from other practitioners’ failures than their own successes, a finding contradictory to the psychology of good and bad. Some studies also suggest that the inclination towards positive emotions and the rejection of negative emotions is a cultural tendency, typically a characteristic of European Americans; in other cultures, negative emotions are part of everyday life and are thus not eliminated (Chentsova-Dutton, Senft, & Ryder, 2014; Sundararajan, 2014). Future research should explore diverse cultural contexts in which students’ emotional reactions towards music are shaped. For instance, Teo, Hargreaves, and Lee (2008) observed that a positive relationship between familiarity, identification and preference as it relates to Asian music is itself dependent on specific musical, ethnic and cultural conditions experienced by the students. Becoming familiar with the music of specific cultural groups may or may not increase preference due to the surrounding cultural conditions among the listeners and those groups within a real-world context. Individual processes of music learning and emotional reactions therefore also need to be understood within broader cultural conditions. ³