Towards an Epistemology of Authenticity in Higher Popular Music Education

Popular music education is becoming firmly established as an academic field, in the

UK and internationally. In order to help ensure that scholarship and practice

within the field develop in reflexive and ethical ways appropriate to particular

traditions, musics, people and institutional contexts, the authors advocate a

discursive and iterative approach to the question of what it means to be “authentic”

across higher popular music education (HPME). With reference to current

research, policy and industry documentation, the authors present a discussion

framed by theories concerning authenticity in the domains of the vocational and

academic, employability, music, gender, and pedagogy. The authors conclude that

institutions and individuals working in higher popular music education have a

responsibility to place the issue of authenticity at the center of pedagogy,

curriculum design, institutional strategy and disciplinary knowledge share, in

order for the field to develop in ways that are beneficial to all involved.