Editorial

Editorial The recent wave of terrorist attacks, destroying the World Trade Center buildings in New York City and a large section of the PentagoninWashington, D.C., alongwiththe loss of a plane load of people in Pennsylvania, has afforded an opportunityto reflect on our lives and their meaning. Karen Armstrong referred to this disaster as a revelatory moment, a time for taking stock and understanding the meanings behind the labels, the words, and the terrible acts. As musicians and educators, we may ask ourselves what is really important in what we do. Is music just a frill orcentral to people's lives? As we have watched music serve a central role in public and private grieving and comforting during the past weeks especially, we see again how vital it is and can be. Across the musical spectrum, people have turned to music for solace and we have witnessed performance after performance by musicians in concerts, religious services, and patriotic ceremonies. We have also been reminded of the importance of clarifying our meanings and of listening to the different meanings ascribed by other peoples ofthe earth. Ofparticular concern are the labels, definitions, and metaphors we and others invoke. Time and again in recent weeks, we have witnessed the impact ofnuance, alternate interpretations, the perspectives of different others, and the need for going beyond the words to what is being meant. Ifever there was a time when philosophy is important to the work of music education it is now. As philosophers and those interested in its work, we are committed to the pursuit ofmeaning and wisdom. In our reading, reflection, and writing, we seekto understandand articulatewhat we see as truths at the heart of things. We are about trying to uncover the meanings of words, sometimes in common use but too often buried under a rubble ofdebris and clutter that obscures their intent. We are about defining things, labeling things, redefining things, and suggesting metaphors that express things in sometimes startling new ways. And in music education, caught between the worlds oftheoryand practice, we are about relating and applying ideas in the phenomenal world. The quartet ofpapers featured in this issue and responses to them were prepared and presented well before the recent devastating events. Yet they have a remarkable relevance to this particular time because they have to do centrally with why philosophy as a way of thinking is so essential to ourpresent world. They haveto do withthe importance ofmeaning and its intersection with practice. And they concern notions ofmetaphor, re-definition, label, and the relationship ofunderstanding to practice. Randall Allsup's essay on the notion of music educationas liberatorypractice draws from the ideas of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness ofBeing. As he explores the dialectics of lightness and weight and relates Kundera's ideas to Beethoven's String Quartet in F Major, notions of freedom and responsibility in music education come into sharp focus. And moving beyond one's apparent fate to tackle the problems and challenges of one's lived situation is a possible outcome of music education seen as liberatory practice. Mining ideas in Ernest Gellner's Plough, Sword, andBook, ClaireDetels examines whythe arts have become peripheral to general education and what can be done to bring them back to its center where they belong. Pointing to their purpose as representing and expressing a culture, she suggests ways in which their role in general education might be redefined. Although an ambitious undertaking, Detels argues that the arts©Philosophy ofMusic Education Review 9, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 1-2. Philosophy of Music Education Review in education can and ought to be re-defined. And to put flesh on her ideas, sheprovides a case study ofthe sorts of approaches she has in mind. Of all the quintessentially "American" musical genres, country music has become ubiquitous in the United States and beyond. Not content to take this music for granted, Carolyn Livingston explores the names that have been used to describe it, from its roots as "hillbilly" music to its present designation as "country" music, and the meanings behind the labels. She sees different labels being essential in the future as the music changes and its influence broadens. She admonishes music...