Inclusive Listening

Our essay presents a critique of the limitations of Western Classical Music (WCM) in Aural Studies curricula, and the problems this poses for students from diverse musicking backgrounds. We propose a new teaching and learning framework, inspired by Black Feminist Pedagogy and aimed towards inclusivity, that devotes prolonged attention to multiple kinds of listening and analysis practices outside the WCM tradition. Our framework will be a live, open-access resource for teachers and self-directed students to understand various methods of listening and analysis. We prioritize the ability of this framework to communicate to students from a variety of disciplines and musicking backgrounds, including those who wish to develop listening skills relevant to electronic music practices, sound art, scored music, improvised music, and traditional musics. We believe that Aural Studies should be a teaching and learning space where a radical, prolonged breaking-down of institutional hierarchies can be enacted and propose that Aural Studies practices hold the potential to escape the notation-centeredness of WCM and the power dynamics implicit in that orientation.