Please note that most of this blog post was written in September and I am adding more information while I am Mumbai which accounts for the weird grammatical tenses. However, I do not give away anything as this is told chronologically. This was a difficult post to write for many reasons. One reason was the permissions from the schools. Two, is the fact that my research focus has changed over the time that I have obtained information. There are no books and nothing on the Internet where all of the information is nicely packaged. I am putting all of this together from scratch.
A trip to India for my husband was imminent. It was not a matter of if but when. It was postponed a couple of times in 2014. One, for our move to NYC from Baltimore, two, his brother’s wedding, and three, bad timing at his workplace. Finally, he got the green light to go. This raised the question for me to accompany him. The summer would have been perfect because it was right after our move to NYC and then I could focus on employment after the trip.
He found out in August that we would be going to India for sure in November. I said: How sure? Sure enough to buy you a ticket if you want to come.
I started thinking to myself, what would I do in Mumbai by myself? Yes, my husband and I would be staying in the same hotel room. He already works long hours and they would get longer in India having to work with New Yorkers and Indians on a 9.5 hour time difference. I was told that by being a woman, going out at night by myself was out of the question. Also, traffic is a menace, especially in a city of 20 million people. The hotel is close to his office but far from everything else a tourist would want to go. Like Cinderella, I have a curfew which unfortunately is twilight to be back at the hotel. She at least had until midnight! I must plan accordingly.
The wheels started to turn and I finally realized what I wanted to do. I am not a fan of cruise ships (unless I became a working musician on one) or all-inclusives. I actually want to see the people and the culture in action. But how can I do this in a place where I am not familiar with the culture or its primary language which is Hindi and where I know absolutely no one? Unfortunately for me this time, my intermediate Spanish does not count.
Well, there are two things I am interested in and have some knowledge. One is fashion where I am a neophyte and two is music education in which I took few years off from teaching (music, K-12) to explore other careers although I still do research as a consultant.
I therefore Googled: “what is music education like in India” and found only a handful of articles that addressed the subject. The other results focused on how to teach traditional Indian music in (western) classrooms. I was somewhat surprised by this at first but after sinking into a deep trance revisiting the dusty files in my mind about what I have learned about international music education and world music in general, the surprise wore off. I realized that all I knew about traditional or classical Indian music fit on the point of a sewing needle, let alone how western classical music is viewed in India.
To be fair, the music education degree requirements are vast and dense. Generally in the US, your undergraduate music education degree will leave you qualified to teach band, chorus, strings, and general music for grades K-12. You are a jack of all trades and a relative master of the one (or maybe two) that you had the most time to put into during your own K-12 music training. World music and international music education, if you are lucky, barely gets mentioned but at least it piques your curiosity. Like me, you can set it aside and deeply explore that seed of curiosity on your own time and terms.
Thus, I decided that I wanted to see how music is taught in India (don’t start laughing yet until you read more about the word India). (I am not affiliated with any university or organization so this is my own research project.)
I contacted all of my Boston University professors. Only one was able to give me help as the rest have no contacts or experience working in Mumbai. Professor André De Quadros grew up in Mumbai and was able to put me on the right path after an hour-long phone conversation in-between flights for him and pit orchestra opera tech rehearsals for me.
That conversation was enlightening. I had to fine tune my research skills in my head as I spoke to him. I was a little rusty but quickly saw a sheen and I was back to my old 2003-2009 (with a little bit from 2010-2014) research self. I perform research as a consultant but there is always a goal in sight and things are pretty well defined for what I have to do. I am building this project from scratch. He pointed out many things in that short amount of time including:
1. (After much laughter from Professor De Quadros). India is a large country geographically that has about 2 billion people. There are myriads of subcultures that live in this country. Retry your focus to Mumbai. Even then, Mumbai in itself has many different subcultures so you can’t lump everything together and say that this is what music education is like in Mumbai. I must be specific to what I saw and where I saw it.
2. What do I really want to do, see, learn from watching the music classes?
3. I need to find English speaking schools to an extent where I can communicate with some of the adults. The students do not necessarily have to speak English or understand very much of it.
4. He gave me the names of two private schools he recommended. I will name them when I have observed their programs.
5. See if I can talk to either one of my husband’s employees or a hotel worker about seeing a government school music program in action.
6. Traveling around Mumbai is a great challenge due to traffic.
7. He agreed with me that not much is written about music education in India. Sure, there are many lesson plans that incorporate traditional Indian music in music education classrooms in the US, but there is not much research about music education in India from any standpoint.
8. See what I can find out and call him when I get back.
It was only then that I realized that I would actually being doing an ethnographic music education research project. The word “ethnographic” is used VERY loosely. I want to see music classes in action and maybe teach a few of my own. Hopefully, I will be able to record these lessons on video and take pictures of the environment.
After the opera and a bout with the flu, I was ready to tackle the first part of the research: the literature review and contact with the two schools.
After a VERY quick scan of ten articles: some online newspaper articles from India, some from music education journals, I learned or was confirmed the following:
1. Music education is scarce in India and Mumbai.
2. The guru-shishya tradition is alive and well in teaching music, especially traditional Indian Classical musical instruments.
3. Everyone is interested in increasing the presence of music education in Mumbai, the government, the people, the educators, everyone. There is very little said if that means Western Classical music or traditional Indian Classical music or both.
4. There is a high interest in electronic music.
5. Music is very important in Bollywood.
6. In relation to the total population in Mumbai, very few people are receiving music lessons or music education.
(There is more but this blog is not the research paper.)
Loads of scenarios popped in my head as to what the music education scene looks like in Mumbai based on the small amount of information above. One scenario that I envisioned was a fusion of Indian and Western Classical music in vocal and instrumental ensembles. What would that look like? How about musical theater? What would an American or British musical infused with Bollywood look like? (Cue the Indian laugh track now.)
While I was getting the courage to cold call the schools in India, I browsed their websites. (I will give the links to their websites if I get permission to do so). I was looking for information to use to help give me a more clear picture of how music is valued. It is vastly different from school to school and not many schools mention music. The differences are contained within Western Classical music although a few schools mention that some Indian Classical music is taught. Most of the music curriculum is vocal which lead me to believe that money and access to instruments was an issue.
In the meantime, I rejoined the National Association for Music Education (http://www.nafme.org) as an Associate member just for the information. The editor is still there. She is amazing. I remembered speaking to her about my master’s thesis a decade ago. She was excited about this project for me and said that it would be quite an addition to the music education literature if I do a good job in presenting the information and obtaining the research. Ella is well-traveled and had many useful tips for my first trip overseas. Her well wishes meant a lot to me. She has read a lot of brilliant research pieces in her day. I hope to impress her. Yes, I plan to submit an article for review once my research is finished and it is written.
It was only until now that I realized that I have never seen anyone post their stream of consciousness while tackling a new research project. I know that many students are curious as what it is like to tackle one. Now, they will have a clue. The caveat is that I am doing this for myself and am not affiliated with any university. I have done a case study that was ethnographic in nature before over the course of 5 yeas with my master’s thesis. http://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/898/browse?value=Gnibus%2C+Melissa+Helene&type=author
I know that I am leaving this blog post hanging in the air. My goal is to keep a daily blog. It will take a lot of perseverance to maintain this goal. There is much to write about with my experience in Mumbai.