The effects of composer's ethnic identity on the stated musical preferences of university non-music majors

Abstract

Formal study of music in the United States is based on the Western art music tradition. Nevertheless, there is a philosophy rapidly spreading throughout the United States which holds that musics of many cultures must be taught in the schools. The underlying belief in multicultural music education is that the study of various cultures and their musics will affect our expectations, and consequently broaden our musical preferences. This study investigated the effects of ethnicity on the stated musical preferences of university non-music majors. It was conducted on two university campuses that are in the same area. One campus has a population that is predominantly white American and the other predominantly African American. The subjects were students enrolled in music appreciation classes on both sites. The subjects listened to musical examples from each of the Western art music style periods. They then completed a questionnaire which contained an ethnic attitudes dimension. A week later, they were asked to listen and respond to four musical examples. The playing of this series of musical examples was preceded by biographical information on fictitious composers. The data supported the alternative hypothesis which stated that ratings assigned to music of African American composers and white American composers by all listeners, without regard to ethnicity, would be significantly different. The value of Omnibus p was.002 and is significantly less than the stated alpha level of significance at.05. The data between ethnic groups supports the alternative hypothesis that ratings assigned by white Americans and African Americans would be significantly different. The Omnibus p here is equal to.02. There was no relationship found between the ethnic attitudes and musical preferences of white Americans and African Americans as stated in the null hypothesis. Non-hypothesized questions investigated the effects of the subjects' rank in school, gender, age, grade point average, and university attended. The data supports the conclusion that rank, age, and grade point average, for this investigation, were not significant. Conversely, the data does reveal that gender and universities were found to have a relationship to the ethnic attitudes and musical preferences of the subjects.