Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.
The purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate student experiences in a bluegrass ensemble, Appalachian traditions, and the impact of ensemble participation on the students’ collegiate careers. As undergraduate music programs work to create more culturally relevant spaces, the question arises: What culture are we moving toward? While pop music may appeal to the masses, more localized forms of music also deserve attention. “In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky,” one university set out to study and play the music of the locals, both past and present. The University of Pikeville maintains traditional wind band and choral ensembles, but the school also embraces its history. Dr. John Eric Rutherford, whose family hails from Paintsville, KY, and Logan, WV, has worked to raise Appalachian cultural awareness with the practice of bluegrass music among his undergraduate students. The University of Pikeville is located along the Country Music Highway (U.S. 23) in southeastern Kentucky. Many of its students are first-generation college attendees with family roots within a 100-mile radius. The UPike Bluegrass Ensemble is student-driven, with song selection and arrangements determined by the students themselves. Some students are just learning to play “bluegrass” instruments while others have developed skills before attending college. Their set list consists of old bluegrass standards and new favorites, as well as covers of rock, pop, and folk songs arranged in a bluegrass style. Suggestions for implementing bluegrass, country, folk, and traditional old-time music ensembles are offered.
Popular music education has long been vaunted for its capacity to reach marginalized populations within schools. By providing access to popular music education, school districts can more effectively engage students of diverse backgrounds by providing music activities that are more culturally and personally relevant. However, the inclusion of popular music as part of a school district’s offerings does not ensure equitability in terms of access nor in terms of support. In some rural areas, it is common for students to opt into vocational training during the school day that removes them from their primary school campuses and substantially limits their options for enrolling in music courses. Often, these students come from the most impoverished families, thus, access to music classes is defined in part by socioeconomic status. In this presentation, I explore and reflect upon this aspect of teaching and learning music in a rural, largely impoverished district. In my particular teaching context, a guitar class was offered as an alternative to the traditional large music ensembles, but due to district scheduling policy, this site for popular music education was often used as a “dumping ground” for students who needed to earn a music credit, including many who attended off-campus vocational training. Although the district’s inclusion of popular music provides an important outlet for the students who utilize it, I argue that the policies of the district and other districts in the area re-entrench the physical separation and cultural differences of student populations, largely along lines of class.
Music has always been the soundtrack to our lives; telling stories and histories of what’s happening, what could happen and how it can get better. Everyone always says “that ain’t nothing but the blues.” The reason is the Blues is the foundation of American music, however it took the UK musicians to reintroduce African-American master musicians and songwriters to white America in the 1960s, formerly known as the “British Invasion.” Many British artists and bands were idolized and paid homage to Delta Blues musicians like Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters and so many more. In his forthcoming documentary film, "Take Me To The River London," GRAMMY and SXSW Award Winner Martin Shore tells this story through a style he has pioneered, The Living Documentary, that incorporates new and original art that evolves during the film providing an interactive experience. By examining these musical traditions and cultures through audio/visual and music activities that bring parts of these cultures to life during the presentation participants will gain an understanding of how these traditions inspired and reminded being able to be carried through to current times, providing a runway to build cultural fluency with a multicultural awareness lens. This will be done with audio and visual from the forthcoming film "Take Me To The River London."
ROCK ’N’ ROLL has been the soundtrack of youth rebellion for almost eight decades. It is one of the United States’ most powerful cultural exports to the world. It may seem cliché to say rock ’n’ roll is not just about music, but the moment it gripped a postwar generation of American teenagers, its anthems became words to live by—and future generations would never be the same. Kids questioned the establishment and decided they did not need to follow parental rules and expectations. They stopped accepting the status quo, and their outside-the-box thinking contributed to accelerated technological advancement. Talented Latinx and Indigenous musicians who crossed cultural boundaries played a big role in the rise of rock ’n’ roll, and all that came with it. When I was a teenager in the 1980s in an extremely violent Peru, rock’s metal subgenre provided some of us with shelter, pride, inspiration, and empowerment. It was one type of music that was so loud and powerful that it shielded me from the sounds of the violence going on outside in the streets. More than thirty years later, these musicians are still my heroes. But the tribal essence of Latinx in the metal lifestyle has not been understood properly by social scientists because its story has not yet been told. Latinx and Native American musicians are present at the beginning of some very significant eras of loud rock, and have contributed to rock’s evolution. Generational renewal has kept alive a music to which critics would tend to attribute only shock value, making it a sixty-plus-year sound institution. In a historical sense, metal and punk remain the most extreme cultural variations of rock. I would even venture that just as African Americans have preserved Gospel through various genres, including rock ’n’ roll, Native Americans are protecting some of their traditions using hard rock. Rudy Sarzo and Carlos Cavazo moved metal from underground to mainstream, and gave fuel to metal capitals like San Antonio and Los Angeles. Rock ’n’ roll has attended its own funeral at least four times that I am aware of. And in all those times, what saved the music and kept the flame alive were the loud rockers. The ones with the warrior mentality. Latinx and Native American musicians contributed to the innovation of the time. And I am happy to help tell their story.
