On the record: Expanding popular music education in segregated cities through university–community partnerships

This article examines how university–community partnerships might expand access to popular music education in America’s segregated cities, focusing on Boston as a case study. Drawing on applied ethnomusicology and years of collaboration with Black-led non-profits and community teaching artists, the authors document a campus-based high school recording and production programme launched in 2022. Situated amid widening educational inequities, declining arts participation at the secondary level and policy headwinds, the programme offers tuition-free, stipend-supported instruction in songwriting, beatmaking, recording and album release, taught by Boston Black teaching artists in campus studios and classrooms. Mixed-methods evidence (institutional data, interviews, reflective practice and programme artefacts) indicates gains in access, belonging, creative self-efficacy and identity development for Black and Latinx students from intensely segregated schools – alongside tangible outputs (collaborative singles/albums, media projects) and paid youth leadership and teaching artist opportunities. By centring community expertise, aligning curricula with youth musical cultures and leveraging university infrastructures, the programme illustrates how popular music education can function as a culturally sustaining pedagogy and support a justice-oriented redistribution of resources. We acknowledge the limits of scale and our positionality and call for expanded research on the social, emotional and community impacts of popular music education in segregated cities.