Comments from the Editor: Band Is a Four-Letter Word

I spend too much of my free time perusing the Band Directors Facebook Group. The group is (mostly) a terrific resource for instrumental music educators who are looking for advice about a variety of topics such as repertoire selection, dealing with administrators and caregivers, and classroom management strategies. Periodically, as is often the case with social media, someone will post a screed about something that they found terrible. Put more diplomatically, a “thought-provoking essay.” One of these appeared online after the November 2022 National Association for Music Education National Conference. Essentially, the author thought that many presenters at the conference were espousing that (a) general music approaches should be the primary approach to music education because ensembles are exclusionary and cost-prohibitive, (b) nontraditional music classes and ensembles should be the future of music education, and (c) competition is too much the focus of large ensemble performance. (If you want to read the comments related to this post, I suggest getting some popcorn and scheduling a good hour.) Having attended the conference, I did not believe that these topics were the primary focus of those who presented, but it did spark my interest as to why so many large ensemble directors become agitated when these ideas are circulated. Our world has turned in to one where we feel the need to win, resulting in an often-polarized society (Klein, 2020). As a result, the idea that “two things can be true at once” does not resonate with a large swath of the population. Because I help prepare undergraduates to become instrumental music educators and am a band director myself, I believe in the importance of the large ensemble as part of a holistic music education experience. (One thing is true.) However, I also believe that we have placed too much emphasis on secondary school large ensembles (e.g., funding and staffing, the exalted place of specific composers and their pieces as artifacts, the need for competitions to justify our importance, and a top-down approach to music teaching and learning). (Another thing is true.) I also understand how directors who have spent their careers positively affecting the lives of hundreds and thousands of students could see a perceived move away from the large ensemble as the central force in music education as detrimental or counterproductive. My encouragement to K–12 music teachers and university music education faculty members is to remember the axiom that “one size does not fit all.” I want to advance this idea briefly through the prism of the three viewpoints that were mentioned earlier: