Teaching Aural Skills in Undergraduate Music Using World Music Concepts: A Narrative Inquiry

This project recognizes the potential of pedagogical innovation through world music concepts, particularly in applying world music education techniques to acquiring undergraduate aural skills. The study examines concepts from African drumming, Indian tala, Arabic maqam, and Japanese gagaku, briefly inquiring into the psychology and theory behind these world musics, and determines how best to transfer the concepts to an undergraduate aural skill teaching curriculum alongside its core concepts rooted in the Western classical idiom. Thus, teachers can augment aural skills education at the collegiate level with cross-cultural perspectives and integrative techniques. This qualitative narrative inquiry research recognizes the imbalance in academia where non-Western musical theoretical concepts often receive less scholarly weight than Western ones. Through technical applications of world musics, this paper aims for a byproduct: to change the conception of anything non-Western as exotic, instead seeking to normalize non-Western ideas in aural skills acquisition education. The study presents possible approaches through sample exercises to specific world musics through the Western lens of music education, showing possible synergy methods between them. Indeed, many fields increasingly incorporate non-Western concepts into teaching methods; this project hopes to inspire academics to examine world music concepts to expand their repertoire of pedagogical approaches.