The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education

Popular music is a growing presence in education, formal and otherwise, from primary school to postgraduate study. Programmes, courses and modules in popular music studies, popular music performance, songwriting and areas of music technology are becoming commonplace across higher education. Additionally, specialist pop/rock/jazz graded exam syllabi, such as RockSchool and Trinity Rock and Pop, have emerged in recent years, meaning that it is now possible for school leavers in some countries to meet university entry requirements having studied only popular music. In the context of teacher education, classroom teachers and music-specialists alike are becoming increasingly empowered to introduce popular music into their classrooms. At present, research in Popular Music Education lies at the fringes of the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, community music, cultural studies and popular music studies. The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Music Education is the first book-length publication that brings together a diverse range of scholarship in this emerging field. Perspectives include the historical, sociological, pedagogical, musicological, axiological, reflexive, critical, philosophical and ideological.

Gareth Dylan Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, where he teaches drums, ensemble skills and research. He teaches Rock and Roll Pedagogy on the University of Michigan’s Summer Program, and courses in research, history and philosophy of music education for Boston University online.

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Gareth has presented research at conferences on five continents, and has had his writing published in Research Studies in Music Education and Music Education Research International, as well in edited collections on collaboration in higher music education, advanced performance in music education, Bourdieu and music education, the future of music education, entrepreneurship and innovation, and music in the behavioural and social sciences. His research interests include popular music in higher education, gender, entrepreneurship, pedagogy in popular music, and identity. Gareth’s pioneering study of drummers, I Drum, Therefore I Am, was published by Ashgate in 2013. Gareth is on the editorial and review boards for The British Journal of Music Education, Psychology of Music and Malaysian Music Journal. He also writes a monthly educational column for Rhythm magazine, and is active as a performing, recording popular musician with various artists. Matt Brennan is a Chancellor’s Fellow of Music at the University of Edinburgh and Chair of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). He specializes in popular music studies and his work has appeared in the journals Popular Music, Popular Music History, Popular Music and Society, IASPM@Journal, and Jazz Research Journal. He most recent publication is a book (the first of a three-volume history) co-authored with Simon Frith, Martin Cloonan, and Emma Webster entitled The History of Live Music in Britain 1950-1967: From the Dance Hall to the 100 Club, published by Ashgate in 2013. He is a founding member of the Live Music Exch