Essay on Meaning of Music Literacy

The word literacy is used in all disciplines, yet there are varying understandings of what the word means. To clearly understand the meaning that is dominant in the musical community on the definition of literacy in the context of a musical community, a music student from Atlanta Institute of Music and Media, Atlanta, GA as interviewed to understand their insight on the topic. Specifically, it is evident that a discussion on music literacy cannot be avoided especially in a generation where music is taking many forms. The current work seeks to discuss the concept of music literacy as well as to explain various music literacy practices and consequently evaluating how it is applied in everyday life.

The definition given by my interviewee clearly showed that they help the position that reading and writing skills were the basic elements that a music literate person should have. Therefore, similar to the observation by Asum, it still remains unclear whether one must be an effective oral communicator so that they can be considered literate or if additional requirements particularly on the ability to contextualize or respond to a text to qualify as an illiterate person (6-8). Further, from their experience, the interviewee advised that literacy should involve the ability to read music score or musical notation, as well as to be able to perform that music. Further, it can be agreed that the ability to read musical notations/music scores is a must, although expanding the reading/understanding aspects of musical notations into to involve other multimodal literacy like listening, performing, or communicating with music, must be present (Assum 6-8).

It is often argued that there are three key literacy practices namely music theory practice, aural skills practice, and diverse music genres practice. According to Kim, those in preference of musical theory as a literacy practices argue that theories are founded on what members in a community do, therefore, to be able to discuss about what is in a song one must be able to play or perform the song (69-70). Thus, they considered that to effectively have musical literacy one should be able to perform it and place it within the context of social, cultural and history. Regarding aural skill practice, its supporters give the justification that a music literate person should be able to have enhanced listening skills so that they can identify functional chromaticism in both the musics harmony (applied, modal mixture, and altered harmonies) and melody (modal mixture and chromatic embellishments) (Kim 72-74). To this end, the interviewee agreed that obtaining aural skills was the most effective strategy for one to become music literate. Also, the respondent argued that through diverse music genre practice, a person is able to get exposure to various types of music (interviewee). Accordingly, since they have relative knowledge of basic aural skills their literacy level is enhanced. This matched with the definition by Kim who supports this practice by stating that it ensures that there is something for every musician/learner and therefore by complementing this concept with instructional approaches that suit the interest of each musician the learner gets maximum benefit (72).

In relation to the above, my personal definition of literacy in the musical context is the ability to read, write, and understand language text- either language-based or multimodal texts. My definition is borrowed from the definition of musicianship that is, the body of skill, knowledge, practices, and insights that enhances the construction/assemblage of enables music. It also recognizes that every musician simultaneously acts as a listener, composer, performer, theorist, historian, and a teacher. Accordingly, to various scholars, a musician should understand the technique and process of performing music, understand the elements and principles of music, and have knowledge of the vocabulary to describe and analyze music. Further, a musician should be able to understand the relationship between any genre of music and other disciplines, and also understand music through the contexts of cultural, social and historical.

Hence, to attain music literacy, the curriculum should be designed in a way that is efficient, sequentially based, well-aligned, and based on the national music standards. This will ensure that all musicians and other music experts are able to read and write (notation) and understand the basic ingredients of music like rhythm, time and key signatures, notes, intervals, scales, chords and chord progressions, as well as to interpret music symbols and terms (Jablonsky 67). In music, therefore, it can be said that the way a musician should be able to understand or identify a chord, a note, rhythm or even an intonation, should be similar to how an English learner should understand and identify nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Therefore, reading a book is similar to reading music were the reader sold be able to construct sentences from words which first for a phrase and then contextualized in order to phrases make sense and have to mean. This is the same sequence that a musician uses to make a rhythm and develop meaning in their music (Jablonsky 65).

Regarding literacy practices, I agree that in practice the application of the theoretical approach can be confusing since in the real world every person has their understanding of music which must not strictly follow the rules in the book. As such, I favor the practice of musicians exploiting aural skills and diverse music genres practices which are more practical. It is important however, to underline that diverse music genre should be used interchangeably with aural skills practices because they allow the musician to enjoy their favorite type of music but still be able to interpret and analyze in terms of the basic elements of music like melody and harmony or in terms of chords notes, rhythms and intonation to mention a few.

Works Cited

Asmus, Edward P. "Music Teaching and Music Literacy." Journal of Music Teacher Education13.2 (2004): 6-8. Web

Jablonsky, Stephen. Gaining Music Literacy. [Place of publication not identified]: Kendall Hunt, 2014. Print.

Kim, Hyun-ju. Exploring Disciplinary and Multimodal Literacy Practices In Music Education. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2014. Print. A Dissertation Submitted For Doctor Of Philosophy (Educational Studies) In The University Of Michigan. Print.