“Everybody needs to know where their music comes from”: The musical lives of African American youths, desire, and counternarratives in urban music education

Urban music education scholarship in the United States often operates from a damage-centered perspective, defining urban spaces by their perceived lack. As an alternative to these deficit views, in this research, I employed Tuck’s desire-based framework and critical race theory’s counternarrative, which centers the lived experiences of people of color to challenge dominant narratives that legitimize racial oppression and to create openings to imagine a more just reality. To construct counternarratives, I employed a multiple case study design to document the musical lives of four African American youths who attended public schools in a medium-sized city in the Midwestern United States, guided by the following research questions: (a) How do four African American youths make meaning of music in their lives in different learning contexts? (b) How do these youths envision their ideal school music programs? To address the research questions, I conducted three semi-structured interviews with the four participants, wherein each of their musical lives represented a single case. My cross-case analysis revealed that each participant had a rich, multifaceted musical life intertwined with popular music styles, which was supported by their parents and home environments. The participants made sense of school music offerings through the contexts of their out-of-school experiences, resulting in connections for some and disconnections for one participant. When discussing their ideal school music offerings, the participants generally appreciated traditional large ensemble offerings. However, they wished for school music curricula and pedagogies that aligned more closely with their musical lives outside school and teachers who were supportive of all their students. These findings functioned as counternarratives, challenging assumptions and identifying methodological limitations of prior studies regarding student motivation and parental support for music programs in urban contexts in the United States.