Traditionally, music education in the UK has been shaped by Western classical traditions, with examinations, curriculums and instrumental tuition largely reflecting this heritage. Since the later 20th century, popular music has become significantly better represented in both classroom and instrumental learning, but this tends also towards the mainstream Western tradition which plays more or less to the same rules as in the classical playbook. Blues, jazz, rock & roll and mainstream pop are included as ‘contemporary’ examples, despite often drawing on repertoire that is many decades out of date.
Contrast this with the reality of young people's lives. A quick look at a pupil's playlist might reveal Afrobeats, K-pop, drill, grime, electronic dance music, or indie rock. Most young people interact with music primarily through streaming services, social media platforms like TikTok, or video games – and in contexts that are participatory and socially driven rather than formal or academic.
Identity and engagement
Music is not merely sound; it is a form of identity. When a student hears music that reflects their culture, background or taste, they feel seen. When their music is absent from the classroom, it sends a quiet but powerful message: you do not belong here. For students from minority backgrounds, this exclusion can compound a broader sense of marginalisation in education. Conversely, the inclusion of culturally relevant music can affirm identity, increase confidence, and demonstrate that music education is a space where everyone belongs.
But it's not just about belonging; it's also about learning. Any teacher will tell you that when a student is really interested in the subject material, their engagement and motivation improve, leading to more depth of learning and faster progress. In music especially, where our young people already have their own highly developed sense of taste, offering activities which reflect these tastes is a no-brainer for teachers wanting to increase take-up across qualifications routes and extra-curricular.
Keeping up with the trends
Hold on, you might think, all of this is easier said than done, and it's true that there can be significant barriers to bringing pupils' own music into the classroom. The most practical of these is teacher knowledge and skill; many teachers feel that they don't have enough understanding of genres and styles that are outside their own musical experience to teach them effectively. Even when investing in your own training and development to broaden your own musical horizons, popular culture moves at such a pace that it is difficult to keep up. Your pupils will almost always be ahead of the trend and you will almost always be behind!
While even just listening to BBC Radio 1 on a regular basis can help teachers keep their knowledge of artists and musical trends up to date, there are unlikely to be enough hours in the day for them to get to the stage where they feel like they are ‘expert’ enough to teach every genre or tradition their pupils are interested in. A solution to this could be to bring in guest artists, community musicians or performers, perhaps in conjunction with their local music hub, to plug these gaps and give your students a more authentic experience of different musical cultures.
Suitability of lyrics and artists
Another barrier is suitability of subject matter, which generally is more significant the younger your pupils are. Any music with lyrics needs vetting for suitability, and very often the themes and language of the music our pupils listen to are wholly inappropriate for an educational setting. Sometimes primary schools try to get around this problem by changing the lyrics; I think this is an error, because if your pupils go home and ask Alexa to play it, they're not going to get your sanitised version! Secondary schools have more leeway by virtue of the fact that pupils are older; teachers can often get away with simply playing the ‘clean’ radio versions of songs to eliminate any swearing. Obviously, if you are considering songs in a language that is not your own, you need to be sure of the translation before including them in your curriculum!
Even when the lyrics are unproblematic, the artist themselves may not be considered a suitable role model; and even when the artist is ‘wholesome’, you often load up their music video only to discover they are half-naked for no reason! I know, I know, ‘Calm down Grandma!’ But these are legitimate considerations that factor into whether our pupils' favourite music makes it into our classrooms. That said, the lives of the great classical composers are often highly problematic themselves, and it doesn't seem to have put many of us off promoting their work! Some background checks are necessary when introducing new artists into your curriculum to make sure that you are happy to be promoting them in an educational setting, knowing that students may want to go home and find out more about them.
Instrumental learning
Bringing pupils' music into the classroom curriculum comes with its own set of barriers, but inserting it into instrumental learning is a whole other challenge. While exam boards are getting better at diversifying their syllabuses, it will always remain the case that if you want to take an exam, you need to demonstrate certain elements of technique. Even when a board allows you complete free choice of repertoire, you will still have to pick pieces that demonstrate the right techniques, which are most likely to be written for your instrument. And how many times do you hear the oboe in K-pop? Many instrumental teachers take a broader approach to instrumental learning than just preparing for exams, but with limited lesson time and parents looking to see return on their investment in the form of exam success, it can be difficult to find meaningful opportunities to explore repertoire outside the syllabus. This makes it all the more important that schools offer pupils additional opportunities to use their instrumental skills to explore the music that they love, perhaps through extra-curricular ensemble provision, or through bringing their instrument into the classroom for curriculum work.
Valuing different genres
One aspect we should never let become a barrier to including diverse music in the classroom is its perceived value. Those of us educated in the Western classical tradition were most likely brought up to believe – nonsensically – that this represents ‘the highest form of art’. The myth persists partly because some insist in designating music ‘a universal language’, which it is not. First, music is not a language, as you cannot reliably translate it into meaning; and even if you could, it would in fact be a set of different languages. The Western tonal system, though prevalent across large swathes of the world, is not ubiquitous, and there are plenty of other musical traditions playing by entirely different rules. This means that no one form of music can be said to be ‘better’ than another, just ‘different.’
There will always be aspects of theory and technique that can only be demonstrated through a specific genre, and that's okay. Ultimately there needs to be some give and take to ensure full curriculum coverage, and we can include music that we feel students ‘need’ to develop knowledge of, without it being a value judgement that our music is ‘better’ than theirs. Then our curriculum will become richer in its diversity.
It's everyone's music
So whose music is it anyway? It's everyone's. Take time to ask students about the music they love. Create space in the curriculum for students to share their playlists, introduce their cultural heritage, or present a song that means something to them. This shows our students that we value what they value, and gives them a sense of ownership of their learning that will spur them on to musical success.
