Digital musicianship in post-pandemic popular music education

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about dramatic changes in popular music education, underscoring the importance of technology in both practice and transmission. Nevertheless, the celebration of technological integration as a one-stop solution has led to some challenges remaining overlooked and unsolved, resulting in an increasing mismatch between popular music education and the growth of online musical engagement among young people. Framed by the notion of digital musicianship, this position paper presents an overview of the adoption of technology in popular music education within the lockdown period, in the process raising concerns about whether such revisions can adequately address the challenges faced by popular music education. This leads to a discussion of a potential revamp of digital musicianship as a response to the continued and expanding presence of technology within popular music education and the post-pandemic teaching and learning environment. The authors assert that digital musicianship should encompass learners’ ability to perceive and adopt technologies for online and remote music-making, and critically evaluate their validity and quality in various contexts. Additionally, there is a need to critically address the homogeneity of musical cultures and technological determinism embedded within the design of music technology, alongside tackling the issues of inequality and accessibility.