Music Education and “Music for Uniting the Americas”

Abstract

The field of music education was engaged in unprecedented cross-cultural efforts with Latin American music educators and Latin American music during the period between 1939 and 1946. These inter-American efforts related to the Good Neighbor policies with an emphasis on education and culture in diplomacy. Music educators collaborated with governmental and non-governmental organizations to undertake activities including the development of curricular materials incorporating Latin American music for use in US schools and participating in person-to-person exchanges between American and Latin American music educators. The two genres of music deemed appropriate for schools, folk music and art music, were reinforced in the inter-American educational projects. This combination of efforts to diversify curricular materials and cross-cultural exchanges provided new opportunities for assessing the representation of Latin American musical cultures in US music education.