William J. Coppola – författare

Egotism, Elitism, and the Ethics of Musical Humility examines how cultures of superiority pervade our musical lives and explores ways in which we can challenge them. Combining philosophical inquiry, empirical research, and pop culture examples, William J. Coppola takes a look at how striving for individual achievement can lead us to grow disconnected from one another--and how humility can help us restore our common humanity.To begin, Coppola critiques the damaging effects of egotism on individual musical development and highlights the importance of knowing one's strengths and limitations and engaging with other artists as equal partners. He then goes further, examining how institutional structures like racial oppression, gender inequity, and the neoliberal drive for continual growth and achievement perpetuate ideologies of elitism and exclusion. Ethical responsibility, he argues, extends beyond individual failings into confronting these systemic societal ailments. Finally, Coppola outlines the transformative potentials of musical humility as an empowering virtue for musicians and music educators to achieve the fullest artistic realization of themselves and others.Musical humility is more than just knocking ourselves down a peg from time to time; it is about uplifting ourselves--and others--to celebrate our shared humanity and artistic dignity. By embracing musical humility, musicians and music educators can contribute to social change by fostering self-reflection, facilitating dialogue, and embracing the ethical tensions inherent to our musical lives.

World Music Pedagogy, Volume VII: Teaching World Music in Higher Education addresses a pedagogical pathway of varied strategies for teaching world music in higher education, offering concrete means for diversifying undergraduate studies through world music culture courses. While the first six volumes in this series have detailed theoretical and applied principles of World Music Pedagogy within K-12 public schools and broader communities, this seventh volume is chiefly concerned with infusing culture-rich musical experiences through world music courses at the tertiary level, presenting a compelling argument for the growing need for such perspectives and approaches.These chapters include discussions of the logical trajectories of the framework into world music courses, through which the authors seek to challenge the status quo of lecture-only academic courses in some college and university music programs. Unique to this series, each of these chapters illustrates practical procedures for incorporating the WMP framework into sample classes. However, this volume (like the rest of the series) is not a prescriptive "recipe book" of lesson plans. Rather, it seeks to enrich the conversation surrounding cultural diversity in music through philosophically-rooted, social justice-conscious, and practice-oriented perspectives.