Merry throngs and street gangs: The fabrication of whiteness and the worthy citizen in early vocal instruction and music appreciation, 1830--1930

This study is an exploration of the construction of racial boundaries for participation in vocal instruction and music appreciation K--12 in the United States between 1830 and 1930. In it I argue that the body comportment hailed as worthy by the music curriculum overlapped with notions of Whiteness, an issue that has been unexplored in historical research in music education. The subject is of considerable import to research on the under participation of African Americans in school music programs.; The hypothesis of a racial epistemology traveling in school music is based on an examination of songbooks, school board reports related to early public vocal instruction, music appreciation manuals, professional music teaching journals, and other curriculum documents. However, the scope of the dissertation exceeds the traditional disciplinary limits in music education in order to sketch the systems of reasoning about race, class, religion, language, nationality, and comportment that fabricated the future citizen as a cultivated and exemplary model of Whiteness. The study analyzes pedagogical texts as authored, not by new insight into music teaching alone, but through changes in notions of worthy musical practices and citizenship.; According to the early vocal curriculum 1830--1870, singing was to achieve class order, refresh the mind, and prevent physical and moral degeneration. By the early 1900s, music appreciation manuals focused on analyzing the form and structure of musical genres. In this period, the curriculum categorized students through comportment indicative of genteel taste and the possession of "good ears."; The adjudication of genteel comportment maintained exclusionary boundaries along racial lines; however, racial parameters for participation in school music were/are not explicit. Consequently, the dissertation investigates the intersection of music with discourses on ethnology, medical regimens, self-cultivation, dance, child study, musicology, psychoacoustics, and acoustic technology. By laying out this history, the dissertation aims at compelling educators to engage in a different confrontation with patterns of under-participation of African Americans in school music than has heretofore occurred.