Abstract
Research has illustrated how some cultural forms that were once excluded from higher education institutions become incorporated over time through a process known as “cultural legitimation.” While this process has been well documented for arts forms such as jazz and film, less is known about artforms in the middle of this process, as definitional boundaries and educational aims remain in flux. To better understand this, we ask: how do music educators define popular music and what are their perspectives on educational aims? Using data from an original survey, we analyze opinions using a mixed-methods approach, bringing the results of Q methodology and a thematic analysis together using multiple correspondence analysis. The results suggest the existence of four perspectives on institutional popular music: (a) musicians as professional culture producers, (b) popular music as institutionally legitimate, (c) popular music as an aesthetic enterprise, and, finally, (d) a lack of definitional form.
Keywords
Introduction
Cultural forms have long been categorized by institutions as either entertainment or art, popular or serious, lowbrow or highbrow. A select number of forms have successfully crossed these historical divides through a process called “cultural legitimation.” This process has been well documented in the case of jazz music (Lopes, 2002), opera, theater, dance (DiMaggio, 1992), and the visual arts (Lena, 2019), among others. Institutions of higher learning are instrumental in this process, shaping what is studied and how it is discussed (Baumann, 2007; Lena, 2019). Although much research in this area is archival in nature—focusing on contests that are largely settled—considerably less is known about forms that have recently entered the institution. Because of this, negotiations around the definitions and aims of education remain obscured. The emergence of popular music within higher music education institutions provides such a case, where scholars note that definitions and aims can be challenging to pin down (Bowman, 2004; Smith, 2016).
Since 1990 the number of popular music programs in higher music education institutions has grown across Europe (Coppes & Berkers, 2023; Posthuma, 2001). In the United Kingdom, the majority of popular music programs emerged after 2007, and most of these are housed within newer (post-1992) universities (Cloonan & Hulstedt, 2013). And although knowledge about popular music education is available and growing (Smith et al., 2017), there is more to learn about how educators perceive popular music education within institutions (Jørgensen, 2010). In this article, we analyze original survey data to better understand this process, asking the following research questions: (a) how do educators define popular music, (b) what are the aims of education in this area, and, finally, (c) in what ways do these intersect? Our findings suggest four patterns including a focus on (a) training professional producers of culture, (b) defining institutional and musical boundaries, (c) aesthetic openness, but also (d) a lack of form.
How popular music is defined, the aims of educating students in this field, and how these factors intersect will likely shape the trajectory of popular music more broadly and intended learning objectives more specifically. Based on the perspectives we find here, popular music education could take a number of paths. One possibility is that it follows existing high art logics in much the same way that jazz has (Krikun, 2017; Lopes, 2002), meaning that it may adapt to the framework developed for reproducing classical and associated forms. Another possibility is that popular music programs will fit into higher music education institutions in much the same way that disparate academic disciplines are housed within the same university. Popular music education may well be a “low consensus field” (equivalent to social sciences) among its “high consensus field” counterparts (equivalent to physical sciences; Kuhn, 1970/1994). The aim of the research reported in this article is to examine both current practices and possible future pathways in higher popular music education with regard to consensus.
Literature review
Cultural legitimation
Cultural legitimation refers to a process whereby perceptions of a cultural form shift “from merely entertainment, commerce, fad [. . .] to culture that is legitimately artistic, whether that be popular or high art” (Baumann, 2007, p. 49). Research shows how inclusion in tertiary education is key to the legitimation of cultural forms. DiMaggio (1992) demonstrates how entrepreneurial elites and nonprofits “develop[ed] ties to the universities, which in the United States have been the dominant centres in which cultural authority has been institutionalized, as well as the organizations most responsible for engaging the interests of young people in elite culture” (p. 44). By selectively removing elements of “popular” from “high” culture, these institutions were able to define aesthetic boundaries that have become taken for granted. Baumann (2007) studied Hollywood film to develop a more thorough framework for understanding how forms shift from popular to high culture. This legitimation framework includes three crucial and overlapping elements including “opportunity space, institutionalized resources and activities, and intellectualizing discourse” (Baumann, 2007, p. 18). Higher education institutions are crucial within this framework: they are one of the places where resources become institutionalized, and where course curricula and public symposia shape discourse about forms.
The case of jazz provides further insights into this process (Lopes, 2002). Jazz, a family of subgenres that have their genesis in early-1900s Black communities in the American South, is now studied in conservatories worldwide as a form of academic art music. But it reached that point through a long process of legitimation. Jazz was first incorporated into higher education at a small number of historically Black colleges and universities in the 1920s (Goodrich, 2008). In the United States, further growth followed World War II, as returning veterans with experience in jazz took advantage of the GI Bill to study music at university (Goodrich, 2008). Following World War II, jazz in the United States pulled away from clubs and increasingly toward college campuses, as an art form for students to enjoy, write about, play, and critique (Bowman, 2004; Goodrich, 2008; Lopes, 2002). By 1970, jazz had become an academic field of study and performance, as the number of instructors and departments grew. But this process also led to important compromises on the part of educators. Powell (2011) noted how “the process of trying to make jazz fit into the current music education structure led to a transformation of how jazz was taught and learned” (p. 211) and not so much the other way around. The end result was the development of what Bowman (2004) referred to as “school jazz” (p. 30), a form bereft of improvisation and the vocabulary particular to jazz culture (Goodrich, 2008).
The example of jazz is informative here, as it can be seen to become fully legitimized within higher education (Smith, 2016). The opportunities for popular music to be included in higher education have expanded because of generational changes within the educational field: previous generations that grew up consuming popular music forms moved into higher education and replaced previous cohorts (Coppes & Berkers, 2023), similarly to the case of jazz. Now, resources and activities are becoming institutionalized, as the emergence of popular music programs at publicly funded higher music education institutions demonstrates. Although opposition to the legitimation of popular music education has been noted by Hebert et al. (2017), educators in the field have argued for a shift in paradigm, incorporating informal and nonformal practices within the academy (Cremata et al., 2016; Ng, 2020; Tobias, 2013). However, important work in the field of popular music education has argued that in this emerging field, there may be a lack of consensus on definitions and aims (Bowman, 2004; Cloonan & Hulstedt, 2013; Smith, 2016).
Consensus
American sociologist Zelditch (2001) published extensively on the topics of legitimacy and consensus, establishing the linkage between the two. He asserted that excluded practices become integrated into the whole through the development of consensus. But he is quick to note that consensus is never total. For Zelditch (2001), it is enough to think of what he calls “near consensus as consensus” (p. 10), though what this means empirically is not defined (e.g., 60% agreement). Alexander and Bowler (2021) use the example of Outsider Art to examine consensus and the legitimation process. The category of “Outsider Art” emerges as a legitimate field of artistic production through a process similar to the one outlined by Baumann (2007). However, what they find is that the assumption of consensus by cultural legitimation theorists is overstated. By examining multiple aspects of Outsider Art, they find that the process is far more fraught with conflict than is typically accounted for by researchers. In cases where cultural forms have achieved a degree of consensus and legitimacy, there is likely still to be ongoing contests where there are (a) high levels of ambiguity, (b) many different kinds of stakeholders, and (c) changing stakes. All three of these seem to apply to the case of popular music in higher education. To Alexander and Bowler (2021), achieving institutional legitimacy is not an end point but a continued negotiation over definitions.
Cultural legitimation theorists usually focus on artistic and musical forms. There is less focus on institutions themselves, which can contain within them very heterogeneous fields with regard to consensus. Because of this, it is useful to engage with a separate body of literature focusing on scientific production. Stemming from Kuhn’s (1970/1994) pioneering work on the history of scientific discovery, much of this research aims to understand how academic fields differ from one another (Biglan, 1973), and how consensus shapes knowledge production (Evans, 2007). In this work, academic fields are topologized into high and low consensus fields, where discussions around proper methods and the kinds of questions worth pursuing are key (Hargens & Kelly-Wilson, 1994). The division within universities usually follows the traditional hard/soft science dichotomy (Torres et al., 2019). In many of the hard sciences there is high consensus around questions worth pursuing, and the proper methods to pursue them (Hargens & Kelly-Wilson, 1994). Within the soft sciences these ideals remain contested, as debates often span a greater period than in the hard sciences (Brandt, 2021).
Although this lower level of consensus can be perceived as a lack of internal consistency, it also has distinct advantages. Low consensus fields can be more open to traditionally excluded voices and to the influence of developments in other fields (Torres et al., 2019). Disciplines like higher education studies (Smith & Brown, 2020; Torres et al., 2019) and more recently the study of creativity (Brandt, 2021; Simonton, 2018) have turned their attention to the topic of field consensus. Brandt (2021) notes how consensus around the value of creative work in fields like music developed over a very long period. Both high and low consensus scientific fields have long shared the same level of institutionalization and legitimacy within the academic realm. Universities contain within them disciplines whose fields are structured very differently to one another (i.e., physics and sociology). Cloonan and Hulstedt (2013) undertook a systematic study of UK popular music study programs and course offerings, and they found that the “current provision [. . .] is highly varied [. . .] [which] raises questions about the extent to which [the field] can be viewed as a coherent and unified field of study” (p. 68). Considerably less is known about field consensus inside higher music education institutions in continental Europe. To address this, we explore two areas of concern: (a) definitions of popular music and (b) key tensions in creative production.
Defining popular music
Academic work on popular music notes how difficult it is to arrive at a consensus on a singular definition which encompasses all the complexity and dynamism related to the term (Bowman, 2004; Smith, 2016; Springer, 2016). Contradictions arise when considering the dual meaning of the term “popular,” implying both (a) of the common people and (b) commercially successful (Shuker, 2005). Shuker (2005) “equat[es] ‘popular music’ with the main commercially produced and marketed musical genres, primarily in a Western context” (p. xiii), excluding jazz and blues. For Regev (2013), the term popular music “refers to the socio-cultural setting in which music is produced and received” (p. 21), in contrast to high art and folk forms. Frith (1996/1999) notes how in each of these art worlds (popular, high art, and folk) differences emerge with regard to how those in the field negotiate the tension between art and commerce. Within the folk and high art world discourses, there is a concerted effort to deny the influence of commerce (even if these discourses do not match actual practices). For Frith (1996/1999), this is less so within the popular music art world. Further developing this framework, Van Eijck and Lievens (2008) define a popular music schema which is focused on the characteristics and values of the typical consumers of these forms (young, lower educated, and seeking fun experiences). In the concluding chapter of The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music, Hebert et al. (2017) noted that even with important growth in the academic field of popular music education, the book was the first to define the emergent field and its practices.
In these definitions we can see multiple foci. These include the relationship between art and commerce, boundaries drawn between specific genres, an emphasis on the production process, the characteristics of consumers, and popular music’s contrast to the art worlds of high art and folk music. These perspectives reflect different kinds of research designs and aims, working to define an object of study which is difficult to encompass in a single definition. Yet, educators have a different set of responsibilities: to make decisions about what students should study. Aims and definitions are even more a necessity in these cases (Dunbar-Hall & Wemyss, 2000), as these can conceivably affect the kinds of practices students take with them into their working lives.
Tensions
Academic research on cultural production more broadly makes note of four basic areas of internal tension: (a) art versus commerce, (b) authenticity versus craft, (c) professionalism versus amateurism, and (d) intrinsic versus extrinsic value. These tensions likely shape definitional boundaries and aims of popular music education as well. Of these, the tension between artistic and commercial motivations (Banks, 2010; Bowman, 2004; Caves, 2000/2002; Hesmondhalgh, 2013) is most apparent. Scholars note how forms only become highbrow once they are outside of typical commercial circuits, either through the efforts of enterprising nonprofits (Lena, 2019) or due to market and/or audience abandonment (Baumann, 2007). Educational institutions seem to take up the cause of forms only after their loss of commercial power (Bowman, 2004). This holds true for forms like jazz, opera, theater, and dance (among others). The early embrace of popular music education within the Nordic countries also seems to serve as evidence of this break between commercialism and educational legitimacy (Hebert et al., 2017). But even though Parkinson (2017) points out what he refers to as a dilemma of purpose between commercial and intrinsic value in UK higher popular music education, it remains unclear if it this holds for popular music in the academy in Europe.
Authenticity and craft are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but they tend to emphasize different areas of concentration for cultural production. In the case of popular music, authenticity is often tied to an emotional performance which is “‘genuine,’ ‘natural,’ and without ‘artifice’” (Peterson, 1997, p. 211 as quoted in Lena, 2019, p. 96). Barker and Taylor (2007) note that when a musician focuses on technical proficiency, some audiences perceive that a degree of authenticity is lost. In this perspective, craftsmanship could hinder creative self-expression (Barker & Taylor, 2007). Parkinson and Smith (2015) argue that the emergence of popular music in higher education settings raises a particular point of tension around the topic of authenticity, especially if authenticity has been traditionally understood as an opposition to institutionalization.
Recent research shows that many popular musicians operate in a gray area between amateurism and professionalism (Von der Fuhr, 2015). Technological developments have lowered many barriers to music production (Prior, 2018), providing amateurs with increased opportunities to create. But, as jazz and other forms became increasingly legitimate, creative occupations within them became professionalized. A similar dynamic might be at play with regard to popular music, currently undergoing a professionalization process (Keskinen et al., 2024). When looking at the value of music education, Hansen (1994) argued that although it does have a degree of extrinsic value, the main benefits come from the intrinsic value of learning to listen and to play. Intrinsic and extrinsic values are not without dispute, because the described benefits are often used by institutions to justify governmental funding (Stewart, 2007). These areas of tension within cultural production fields could be potential sources of consensus or dissensus within popular music education. Although work on consensus within scientific fields focuses primarily on research questions and methods, we contend that the fault lines we describe above are more relevant for our object of study.
Method and data
Data for this analysis come from an original English-language online survey designed by the authors in cooperation with the Association Européenne des Conservatoires (AEC) in early 2020. This study received approval from our institutional ethics review board (ETH2223-0022), and provided informed consent via an online form. Participation was voluntary and respondents were anonymous. The survey included multiple choice items, open-ended questions, and a rank order question of statements on popular music and popular music education. 1 The target population was management, teachers, and non-teaching staff at European conservatories. To this end, respondents were recruited via the AEC membership mailing list. Out of 330 respondents who read the recruitment email, 121 returned the survey. Ten responses were excluded due to being empty or outside of the study area. Of these remaining responses, 54 provided an answer to a question regarding the definition of popular music. This final analytical sample includes respondents from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. Although 54 is a small number of respondents, we maintain that relative to the subpopulation they come from (which is also small) and their importance in this field, the results remain important for understanding meaning within cultural institutions (see online Supplemental Table A for descriptive statistics).
We employed a mixed-methods approach to analyze these responses, using thematic analysis of popular music definitions (open question), a Q methodology of key tensions (rank order question), and a multiple correspondence to analyze their intersection. Q methodology (Watts & Stenner, 2012) is useful for studying patterns of subjective viewpoints and has been used to study romantic love (Watts & Stenner, 2014), male and female beauty (Kuipers, 2015), race/ethnicity and gender with relation to rock music production (Schaap & Berkers, 2020), and media representations of aging (Jerslev & Bjerre Jepsen, 2020), among many others. We used Q methodology as a technique for studying how educators perceive the aims of popular music education. We asked respondents to read a set of nine statements on popular music and popular music education (see online Supplemental Table B), and then to rank them relative to one another in terms of agreement or disagreement.
We asked the following open-ended question: “In the context of your institution, what is the definition of popular music?,” intentionally avoiding defining “popular music” for our respondents. We then analyzed these questions using traditional thematic analysis techniques (Hawkins, 2017), passing through three phases of coding (open, axial, and selective coding). This inductive approach resulted in five themes (discussed below). To place the results of these two independent processes in conversation with one another, we employed multiple correspondence analysis (MCA; Hovden, 2011; Le Roux & Rouanet, 2010), a technique historically related to the work of Bourdieu (1984) and other research in the area of cultural sociology (Coulangeon, 2017; Glevarec & Cibois, 2021; Roose et al., 2012).
Results
The presentation of results is structured in three phases. First, we discuss the results of the Q methodology analysis of respondent viewpoints on popular music education. Next, we present the results of a thematic analysis of how popular music was defined. Finally, we synthesise these results through multiple correspondence analysis.
Viewpoints on popular music and popular music education (Q methodology)
Our findings (see online Supplemental Table C) suggest an ambivalence toward the idea that popular music education is about artistry (with evenly distributed percentages), but there was overwhelming disagreement with the idea that popular music education is about commerce (80%). This finding aligned with others in cultural legitimation theory (Baumann, 2007; DiMaggio, 1992; Lena, 2019; Lopes, 2002), which suggests that highbrow cultural institutions tend to exist in opposition to commercial cultural production, contradicting commonly held academic conceptions of popular music as a commercial form. Second, there was support for the notion that a student interested in pursuing a career in popular music should receive professional training. The idea that popular music should be included in the traditional conservatory was also supported, though this was less unequivocal than the aforementioned patterns. Taken together, these findings suggested that popular music is following preexisting high art institutional logics, denying commerciality although emphasizing professionalism. We conducted a Q methodology analysis to better understand the pattern of viewpoints that arise from these statements.
We used the Stata program qfactor (Akhtar-Danesh, 2018) to prepare and analyze the Q sort data. Table 1 presents factor scores and associated statements for the Q methodology analysis. Three viewpoints emerged from this process. 2 Positive values indicate agreement and negative values indicate the opposite. Bold values indicate distinguishing statements. We briefly discuss these factors below.
Factor Scores for Statements in the Study (n = 54).
Source. 2020 Survey of Popular Music Teaching in Europe.
The focus of Factor 1 (Professionalization) was on the importance of professional training for aspiring pop musicians, and the purpose of education not being artistry. Factor 2 (Inclusion) reflected a more institutional perspective, which saw a place for popular music education within higher music education institutions and an emphasis on both craft and the artistic nature of education. Factor 3 (Art over commerce) reflected the traditional tension between art and commerce, suggesting the focus of popular music education should be on the former. Finally, 20 respondent statement sorts did not neatly fit into any given pattern (Lack of consensus).
Definitions of popular music (thematic analysis)
We asked our respondents the open question, “In the context of your institution, what is the definition of popular music?” Using thematic analysis, we coded these answers into open, axial, and selective codes. This process resulted in 93 initial open codes, distilled down to five major themes with regard to how institutions define popular music (see online Supplemental Tables D and E). These themes included (a) genre exclusion/inclusion, (b) production process of popular music, (c) consumption of popular music, (d) broad definitions, and (e) lack of, difficult, or contested definition. We briefly explain more about these themes below.
Most respondents indicated that institutional definitions of popular music have genre exclusion and/or inclusion as an element, though these could differ slightly. Jazz and classical were the most commonly excluded genres, but some mentioned the exclusion of just classical, one mentioned the exclusion of jazz, whereas the rest excluded the forms of folk, religious, and world music. One respondent stated that their institutional definition “includes almost everything that [is not] ‘classical music’ (Western European tradition)” (Respondent 97). Genre inclusion was also a prominent feature of this theme, with most mentioning the inclusion of rock (11), pop (12), or jazz (9), among others. Two others provided a definition which emphasized the hybridity of genres, whereas another specifically named “indie singer-songwriter” as the form that their institution focused upon. Here we could clearly see the reliance on specific genres to give the term “popular music” its form, and to maintain its distinction from classical music. What also seemed to be clear was a dispute around the inclusion or exclusion of jazz, itself an umbrella term which encompasses many different forms and time periods.
Production was the next highest percentage category to genre exclusion/inclusion. Thirty-seven percent of respondents invoked this kind of terminology. Commonly, this referred to when popular music was produced (contemporary, modern, or post-1950s), followed by who had produced popular music, including commerce, origins (African American, folk, blues/jazz, Western, the English-speaking world), specific musical elements, or the use of technology in production. The who, what, where, and why of music production appeared to be an important component of institutional definitions of popular music. Along with the production process, a smaller percentage of respondents made mention of the intended or actual consumers of popular music. Most mentioned popular music as that which is designed for mass consumption or appeal, whereas others mentioned young consumers, youthful expression, or subcultures. A small number mentioned the method of consumption, including ties to recorded media and live audiences.
Most definitions contained both elements of genre exclusion/inclusion, production, and/or consumption as core concepts. Fifteen percent of respondents indicated that the institutional definition of popular music was broad (or wide in some cases), with one stating that “we operate with a broad genre definition” (Respondent 106). Finally, some respondents also indicated a lack of definition (or that it was difficult to clearly identify). One respondent stated that “there is no differentiation—there is only music and no genre based or other way of separating one form of music from another . . .” (Respondent 12).
Intersecting definitions and aims of education (MCA)
To better understand how viewpoints on the aims of popular music education may intersect with institutional definitions, we employed MCA techniques. MCA can be a useful way to analyze relationships between categorical variables, especially relevant for the results of our thematic analysis which produced nonmutually exclusive categories. We treated these themes as a set of dichotomous variables. Supplemental variables included respondent region, position, and music programs (classical, pop, jazz, and world music [yes/no for each]). MCA was conducted in Stata, following the guidance of Hovden (2011). The results indicated that two axes were of most importance, explaining about 65% of the inertia. Axis 1 explained 49%, whereas Axis 2 explained 16%. Table 2 displays variable contributions to each axis.
Contributions of the Active Variable Categories by Axes (n
Source. 2020 Survey of Popular Music Teaching in Europe.
Note. Values in bold italics identify larger than average contributions (M = 0.071).
As can be seen in Table 2, Axis 1 seemed to reflect differences in definitional themes, whereas Axis 2 emphasized perceptions with regard to popular music education (see online Supplemental Figure 1 for MCA plot). Here we summarize four basic patterns. First, institutions which did not have a popular music program also seemed to lack a coherent definition of popular music. There also seemed to be a lack of consensus around the aims of popular music education. This made sense intuitively; institutions with popular music programs had more clearly defined terms and aims than those without. Second, there was an emphasis on the importance of professional training and the societal value of popular music (Factor 1: Professionalization) associated with definitional themes of consumption and production. Third, genre exclusion and inclusion shared an association with an emphasis on the institutional legitimacy of popular music (Factor 2: Inclusion). Finally, Factor 3 (Art over commerce), which stressed the importance of the artistic (as opposed to commercial) value of popular music education, was most closely associated with a broad definition of popular music. We further discuss these patterns in the discussion below.
Discussion
The MCA results suggested that perspectives were differentiated along the first axis according to definitional themes, and along the second axis according to the aims of popular music education. From these results, we interpreted four patterns: First, there was a kind of obvious “noisiness,” where individual perspectives were not easily grouped together and definitions were contested or nonexistent. As we would expect, these seemed to be from respondents affiliated with institutions that did not have specific popular music programs, suggesting that aims and definitions develop as artforms, such as popular music, enter the academy.
As opposed to “noise,” the results provided three additional “signals.” The second pattern identified was that some institutional perspectives placed a high premium on the professionalization of students, utilizing definitions which accounted for consumers and producers of popular music. We refer to this orientation as “Professional Production.” This might mean that institutional actors here focused on preparing students for their role as cultural producers, providing a sense of the field in which they have entered as professionals. A third pattern of note used genre exclusion/inclusion as a defining element of popular music, along with the opinion that popular music belongs within the traditional music conservatory. This pattern seemed to indicate the importance of boundaries, both institutional and genre based. This pattern outlined perspectives that aspiring popular music artists should be included within the boundaries of the traditional conservatory, and differences in genre helped decide what constitutes popular music. We refer to this as the “Institutional and Musical Boundaries” perspective.
Fourth and finally, an emphasis on the artistic value of popular music education sat in bold contrast to the commercial value. Although in some circles popular music is defined by its connection to commerce, this did not appear to be true for this final perspective, which also emphasized the intrinsic value of education for students. Here, the nearest definitional element suggested that the definition of popular music was quite broad. We refer to this as the “Aesthetic Openness” perspective. It may be that in this perspective, broad definitions of popular music provide an open aesthetic space for students to explore forms. In this conceptualization, the conservatory is a place of artistic experimentation, but not at the cost of professional training. These perspectives and corresponding elements are summarized in Table 3.
Summary of Findings.
Source. 2020 Survey of Popular Music Teaching in Europe.
Taken together, these findings suggest that a fit exists between how institutions define popular music and the aims of education in that field. When institutions lack specific popular music programs, definitions and aims become quite “noisy” or unsettled. This confirms earlier work on the legitimization of cultural forms. Popular music, as a term, is quite broad and challenging to define. Yet, as stated earlier, those that work in conservatories have practical concerns above and beyond sociologists of music or cultural theorists; namely, they need to make decisions with regard to what popular music programs will look like.
Another finding of note was that when looking at the individual statements which informed the Q methodology analysis, 80% of respondents disagreed with the statement that the purpose of popular music education is commercial in nature, constituting the closest thing we can find in our data to a “near consensus.” This suggests that although some academic perspectives on popular music may emphasize commerciality (Frith, 1996/1999; Shuker, 2005)—as well as in some UK higher popular music education institutions (Parkinson, 2017)—within the conservatories of Europe this is roundly rejected. Western high art logics have maintained a separation between art and commerce (DiMaggio, 1992; Lena, 2019; Lopes, 2002), yet these ideas come into conflict within institutions of higher learning which aim to both impart aesthetic ideals and prepare students for careers in popular music. A majority of respondents, unsurprisingly, also indicated that they believed aspiring popular music artists should receive professional training. Musicians that enter the conservatory are meant to join the ranks of professional musicians within a specific field, to work within the boundaries of the existing institutional framework, and/or to explore as artists. They are not meant to be motivated by commerce. Taken together, these suggest that even as popular music enters the academy, it adheres to preexisting high art logics, similar to findings by Lena (2019).
Our methodological approach lends itself to the development of what sociologists refer to as “ideal types”; useful categories based on the interpretation of patterns in the data, which do not completely describe any single case. Taking these types together suggests that popular music is making headway in a field “where judgements are ambiguous because they lack objective, strongly institutionalized evaluative criteria, [. . .] where multiple, disparate groups have a stake in the game, and [. . .] where the stakes are changing” (Alexander & Bowler, 2021, p. 13). Music conservatories may have embraced popular music in a bid to remain relevant to contemporary students and remain competitive within the higher education market. What we detect indicates that recently adopted forms are encountering existing institutional logics. These findings further support claims by Alexander and Bowler (2021) that legitimation should be conceived of as both a process and a site of continued negotiation.
Popular music departments are relative newcomers to the music conservatory when compared with classical and jazz. These are modest findings, but they suggest at least two possible paths forward. First, popular music may become increasingly like jazz, in that consensus will develop around the canons and aims of education. Second, conservatories, in an effort to remain relevant to contemporary students, will adapt and become more like academic institutions which house both high consensus (classical and jazz) and low consensus (popular music) fields within them. Our findings indicate the possibility that both are happening, though historical precedence suggests that the first is most likely.
Conclusion
Defining an object of study, however loosely, can help departments and practitioners in higher education institutions craft intended learning outcomes and construct overarching mission statements. The findings we present here are useful for educators and program designers in illuminating some of the underlying perspectives of current developments in higher music education. In this article, we used an inductive approach to study institutional definitions of popular music and the common tensions within this term. Our findings suggest that popular music is following existing institutional logics which run counter to commerciality and amateurism. Furthermore, as popular music enters the conservatory, our study illustrates that definitions and aims evolve. Some views emphasize the professional production of culture, others focus on institutional and musical boundaries, still others suggest the importance of a kind of artistic openness.
In existing popular music education literature, there seem to be tensions between two possible futures: one in which popular music education resembles that of jazz (Powell, 2011), or one in which popular music education remakes the structure and meaning of traditional music education (Bowman, 2004). Popular music—although following existing institutional logics—remains a low consensus field, but this may not necessarily disqualify it from joining higher consensus departments within the conservatory framework. In this way, popular music education and Western high art may coexist in much the same way that very divergent disciplines do within the typical university setting (e.g., physics and literature). The findings we present here contribute to an understanding of how forms endure a period of negotiation although undergoing cultural legitimation, by accounting for these negotiations within higher music education institutions as gatekeepers. Consensus exists around traditional high art topic areas, whereas struggles remain in the rest.
Our research was subject to a number of limitations. Admittedly, we asked much of our data. Ideally, our sample would include representation from every conservatory across Europe, at multiple levels of these organizations (from students, alumni, through to department heads and top administrators). This proved difficult to collect. A response rate of 16% of the intended sample (54/330) is on the low end for online surveys. We maintain, though, that this information, because it comes from this small population, remains relevant for understanding the institutionalization of popular music within European higher education music institutions. A related limitation stems from our reliance on members of the AEC. Because of this we are unable to draw comparisons with private music institutes (such as BIMM and ICMP in the United Kingdom), which may differ in very important ways. Although some of the most important literature on the process of legitimation is historical in nature, explaining change over time, the analysis presented here only provides a snapshot of opinions at a particular time. What this means is that our findings are best suited to observe a particular moment in the legitimation process, but not the process as a whole.
One avenue for future work, both to address limitations and to expand the scope of this research, is to collect data from university music programs and conservatories in the United States. This could provide a point of comparison between Europe and the United States, where previous research has indicated pedagogical differences (Mantie, 2013). Although our data reflect the opinions of a subset of administrators and staff within higher music education institutions, an avenue for future work is to collect the opinions of students and alumni at these institutions (see Harvey, 2023). It is conceivable that there are differences of opinion between those entrenched in the business of music education and a younger generation of students. Finally, in-depth interviews with administration and staff about how popular music implementation is happening and the possible contests over definitions could offer richer information than our survey instrument provides. Although our research was designed to cast a wide net, the questions we investigated are rich and meaning-laden. In the interest of confidentiality, we did not collect identifiable information (like names and email addresses), which means that we could not conduct follow-up interviews on these participants. Future work could incorporate this element, which could further enhance methods like Q methodology.
In sum, popular music is not a genre within itself. It is a large family of genres and subgenres, with multiple origins, divergent practices, and differing audiences (Bowman, 2004; Lena & Peterson, 2008). A singular definition of popular music has been notoriously difficult to ascertain (Bowman, 2004; Jones, 2016/2017), not unlike a singular definition of popular culture itself (Storey, 2006). As an academic exercise, defining popular music can seem like a philosophical exercise at best, a fool’s errand at worst. Yet, the entrance of popular music into higher music education institutions is consequential, both for the mission of educating pupils and for the process of cultural legitimation. Our findings show that discursive negotiations can persist within institutional fields, even as opportunities and resources promote the legitimation of popular culture.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-rsm-10.1177_1321103X241309291 – Supplemental material for Signals and noise: How higher music education institutions define popular music
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-rsm-10.1177_1321103X241309291 for Signals and noise: How higher music education institutions define popular music by Thomas Calkins, Wessel Coppes and Pauwke Berkers in Research Studies in Music Education
Footnotes
Author contribution(s)
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
Author biographies
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
