Analysis on the Development Path of Music Education in Rural Areas under the Influence of COVID-19 Outbreak

In 2020, the sudden COVID-19 outbreak brought huge economic and life losses to the whole world, affecting all walks of life in China, including the education industry which suffered from many problems, such as students' learning needs for medical health knowledge, publicity needs for public health safety, psychological and mental health protection needs, and online learning needs based on internet accelerated speed .In rural China, some rural students have physical and mental health problems due to the problems of rural population structure, infrastructure construction, talent mobility, etc. In this period, schools should pay more attention to the psychological counseling and education of rural students, on which music education has a positive impact. During the epidemic period, rural education construction around cultural revitalization was gradually implemented under the background of China's full implementation of rural revitalization strategy. In the construction of rural education, music education is an important cornerstone to promote the all-round development of students, build a rural cultural atmosphere and inherit the excellent national culture. With the change of social environment, the country music education welcomes new opportunities, but also faces some practical problems to be solved.First of all, the literature on the COVID-19 outbreak and rural music education is studied and analyzed through on-the-spot visits and investigation on the current situation of music education in rural schools. Then, interviews and records are made with rural music teachers and students. Next, discussions are made on the construction of rural music teachers, information technology of music education, cultural life of the rural masses and other aspects. Finally, relevant strategies for the development of rural music education are put forward.The COVID-19 outbreak has narrowed the channels for rural music teachers' professional promotion, and caused some problems in rural students' mental health. In addition, rural schools have some shortcomings in online learning and information education based on internet plus, and the number of rural cultural performances and activities has decreased.Education managers should take corresponding management measures to innovate the music education model with the aid of modern teaching technology. At the same time, rural schools need to maintain long-term cooperation with all sectors of society and cooperate in public health, medical resources, education resources, curriculum innovation, rural cultural activities and other aspects to ensure the real implementation, promotion and development of music education, aesthetic education and art education in the countryside during the COVID-19 epidemic.

A narrative of K-12 rural tenured music teachers : stories of those who stay the course

This qualitative study examined the stories of tenured rural K-12 music teachers in northwest Missouri. The study sought to determine the reasons tenured teachers remain in rural public settings. Guided by the conceptual underpinnings of retention, rural education, and rural music education, the researcher conducted interviews with teachers and administrators, analyzed documents, and analyzed field notes collected from the six school district building sites employing the participants. Completed research helped to identify three emerging themes: (a) scheduling, (b) administration, and (c) culture. The six participating music teachers agreed the frustrations associated with scheduling could be overcome when transparent communication with administration was coupled with continual student rapport building over time. Recommendations for rural administrators, professors of pre-service music teachers at institutions of higher education, and implications for future research relevant in rural music education settings were included.

Remembering Armenian music in Bolis: Komitas Vardapet in transcultural perspective

This article explores the relationship between music, memory and transcultural processes in late Ottoman Istanbul by studying the writings of the Armenian composer and musicologist Komitas Vardapet (1869–1935). It describes the changing political and intellectual landscape in which Komitas and his contemporaries redefined the collective musical memory of the Armenian people through a process of secularisation and internationalisation. I argue that there was a shift from local transculturalism, in which musical memories were to some extent shared between different ethnic and confessional groups in the Ottoman Empire, to a more global and modern transculturalism, in which consciously differentiated and often antagonistic national musical memories were constructed and disseminated across non-local spaces through new media and discursive strategies. In the process, rural music practices were appropriated from their local and unofficial contexts by urban, cosmopolitan elites and purposefully inscribed as monuments of Armenian cultural memory which have endured to the present.

Banda and the Slovak Folk Revival

Chapter 4 discusses the Slovak folk revival of the 1990s–2000s with a case study of the musical group Banda. In Slovakia, audiences continued to enjoy styles of staged folklore from the communist era, but revivalists opposed these older styles and were outspoken in rejecting them. The chapter describes how revival folklorism is part of a movement to rediscover and reimagine Slovakia that sprang up in the 1990s; revivalists wanted to expand styles of rural music-making that existed outside communist-era folklore performance. The chapter discusses the mediation of neighboring Hungary’s dance house movement in Slovakia, and outlines the historical conditions that made it challenging to sustain dance house activity. The chapter argues that at the turn of the twenty-first century, revivalists managed artistic tensions and strengthened their reform efforts by becoming skilled neoliberal actors; making the transition from revivalism to a world-music fusion style allowed the musicians of Banda to be independent creatively and economically.