Abstract
Challenging prevailing ideas of urban music in order to expand normative conceptions of urban music education, this essay proposes a reconceptualization of urban music education as cultural practice. Music educators, particularly those working in urban classrooms and committed to social justice, need to work both with and against the prevailing narrow conception of the “urban” that shapes the way we think about both urban music and urban education. Drawing on insights from contemporary cultural theory, the essay extends a definition of the urban as cultural practice and points to the possibilities that such a framework might offer for a reconceptualization of urban music education.
