Project Descriptions

3. Learning through Music

d) Community Singing and/or Ideology

 

Community Singing has been a crucial part of the music culture in Danish public life in the last 200 years. Many associations and societies have used songs and singing as a way of creating identity and purpose within the context of the nation’s democracy. For children, community singing has been an important part of their education through schools and choirs. Learning the songs has been an easy way to make and impact upon children and give them an understanding of Danish history and culture with or without ideological  connotations. There has been  antipathy against community singing in public schools in the last 40 years because of the suspicion of negative ideological influence. In the last 5 years, though, there has been a great wish to renew community singing and give children a new joyful experience of singing. At the same time, however,  it has been difficult to deal with the old heritage and the resistance against it. The purpose of this research is to investigate the problems raised by the issue of community singing in Danish public life today, and to determine how this problem is solved in schools and in songbooks.  

(Peter Edlef Nissen)

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