Table Of ContentEmpowering Song
Empowering Song: Music Education from the Margins weaves together
subversive pedagogy and theories of resistance with community music
education and choral music, inspiring professionals to revisit and
reconsider their pedagogical practices and approaches. The authors’
unique insight into some of the most marginalized and justice-
deprived contexts in the world ― prisons, refugee shelters, detention
facilities, and migrant encampments ― breeds evocative and compas-
sionate enquiry, laying the theoretical groundwork for pedagogical
practices while detailing the many facets of equity-centered, musical
leadership. Presenting an orientation to healing informed by theory,
Empowering Song explores the ways in which music education might
take on the challenging questions of cultural responsiveness within
the context of justice, seeking to change not only how choral music is
led but also our conceptions of why it should matter to all.
André de Quadros is a professor of music in the Music Education
Department at Boston University, where he holds affiliations in African,
African American, American and New England, Asian, Jewish, and Muslim
studies, at the Center for Antiracist Research, and prison education.
Emilie Amrein is an associate professor of music and the Director of
Choral Studies at the University of San Diego where she conducts the
USD Choral Scholars and teaches courses on the intersection of music
and social justice movements, community music, and changemaking.
Empowering Song
Music Education from the Margins
André de Quadros and Emilie Amrein
First published 2023
by Routledge
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The right of André de Quadros and Emilie Amrein to be
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and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: de Quadros, André, author. | Amrein, Emilie, author.
Title: Empowering song: music education from the margins/
André de
Quadros, Emilie Amrein.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022013501 | ISBN 9780367562496
(hardback) | ISBN
9780367630331 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003097150 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Music--Instruction and study--Social aspects. |
Music--Instruction and study--Moral and ethical aspects. | Choral
music--Social aspects. | Choral music--Political aspects. | Culturally
relevant pedagogy.
Classification: LCC MT1.D395 E66 2022 | DDC 780.71--dc23/
eng/20220413
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013501
ISBN: 978-0-367-56249-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-63033-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09715-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003097150
Typeset in Times
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
List of Figures vi
Foreword by Bryonn Bain ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xviii
PART 1
1 Musicking People 3
2 Disrupting Practice 19
3 Empowering Song 32
PART 2
4 Sounding Bodies 49
5 Narrating Selves 68
6 Dancing Stories 86
7 Painting Dreams 103
Afterword 1 by Wayland Coleman 121
Afterword 2 by Truth 124
Epilogue 126
References 128
Index 152
Figures
1.1 Common Ground Voices/La Frontera on the
United States side of the Mexico-US border
wall at Friendship Park in 2019. 4
1.2 A cutting from The Times of India in 1975 about
André’s concert. 9
1.3 Emilie with her mother and sister taken when she
was 9 years old. 13
1.4 Emilie, singing with a classmate in Fort Wayne,
Indiana, in 1991. 14
1.5 André and Emilie facilitating an Empowering Song
session at Jardín de las Mariposas, Tijuana, Mexico
in 2020. 17
2.1 Sydney Mukasa improvising a solo bridge to “Ezekiel
Saw de Wheel” in performance with VOICES 21C
at the Eastern Division conference of the American
Choral Directors Association in Rochester, New York,
in 2020. 20
2.2 Ibis Laurel singing in rehearsal with Common
Ground Voices/La Frontera in San Diego, 2019. 22
2.3 VOICES 21C in performance at the Eastern Division
conference of the American Choral Directors
Association in Rochester, New York, in 2020. 27
3.1 Mark, an incarcerated empowering song participant,
created this spoken text poem, “Adolences,” as part
of an Empowering Song workshop in 2013. 33
3.2 The Massachusetts prison that was the birthplace of
Empowering Song. 35
3.3 Incarcerated artist, Wayland Coleman, created this
piece of narrative artwork, titled “Neither Have I
Wings to Fly” in a 2014 Empowering Song workshop
in Massachusetts. 36
Figures vii
3.4 Participants from Common Ground Voices/La
Frontera gather in a circular embrace on the floor
of the Espacio Migrante migrant shelter in Tijuana,
Mexico in 2019. 40
3.5 University of San Diego students lie on the floor
as part of a staged scene they devised at a retreat
where Empowering Song was explored in Oceanside,
California in 2019. 42
4.1 John and Elisa, participants in a Common Ground
Voices/La Frontera workshop, construct a tableau
at Casa del Migrante, Tijuana, Mexico in 2019. 50
4.2 Participants in a Common Ground Voices/La
Frontera workshop at Casa del Migrante, Tijuana,
Mexico in 2019, considering the words despedida
(despair), agonía (agony), fé (faith), confusión (confusion),
and esperanza (hope). 56
4.3 VOICES 21C at the Choralies Festival, Vaison-la-
Romaine, France in 2019 performing a piece about
forced migration for an audience of more than 6,000. 66
5.1 Decorated papier-mâché masks made by participants
in a Common Ground Voices/La Frontera workshop
at Espacio Migrante, Tijuana, Mexico in 2019. 69
5.2 Participants in a Common Ground Voices/La Frontera
workshop at Jardín de las Mariposas, Tijuana, Mexico
in 2020 − working with masks. 74
5.3 Sarah, an incarcerated artist, contributed this poem
as part of an Empowering Song workshop in
Massachusetts in 2015. The text reads “Minutes
now feel like eternity/Always you are out of
reach/Beyond my grasp/Swallowed whole/So far
beyond the blue/How quickly sorrow comes to sing/And
it drags the meaning/Forth from everything/And I’d
die to say I missed you/I’d lay it bare to say I cared/But
my heart still wears it’s/Wanting/Way Beyond the Blue.” 83
6.1 Hikmat Qaymari and André lead the dabke at a
Common Ground Voices (Jerusalem) public event
in 2018 as part of the Musica Sacra Festival in
Marktoberdorf, Germany. 87
6.2 Alejandro Gómez de Santos and Muna Msheal
engaging in a body-based dialogue exercise at a
Common Ground Voices (Jerusalem) workshop
in Galilee in 2019. 98
viii Figures
6.3 Participants in a Common Ground Voices/La
Frontera workshop at Casa del Migrante in Tijuana,
Mexico telling stories and listening deeply. 100
7.1 At the conclusion of a Common Ground Voices/La
Frontera workshop with transgender refugees at
Jardín de las Mariposas in Tijuana, Mexico in 2020. 104
7.2 At a Common Ground Voices/La Frontera workshop
with transgender refugees at Jardín de las Mariposas
in Tijuana, Mexico in 2020 − the body is telling
the story. 111
7.3 From a Common Ground Voices/La Frontera
workshop with transgender refugees at Jardín de las
Mariposas in Tijuana, Mexico in 2020 with text
that reads “Si ellos pueden transitar libremente por
el mundo, Por qué yo no? (If they can pass freely around
the world, why can’t I?)” followed by the words
“La Politica (politics),” “Nacionalidad (nationality),”
“Burocracia (bureaucracy),” “Trump/Republicano,”
“VISA,” “El racismo (racism),” and “ICE (Immigration
and Customs Enforcement).” 119
Foreword
Because I had loved so deeply,
Because I had loved so long,
God in His great compassion
Gave me the gift of song.
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1905)
Empowering Song uses music to reclaim our humanity in inhumane
places. It smuggles imagination into dungeons; turns creativity
from contraband into commissary. Under the envious eye of armed
guards, it unlocks more knowledge on the prison yard than most
scholars on Harvard Yard; runs rivers of refuge through deserts
of despair; and liberates the spirit of community by any melody
necessary.
Several years ago, while interviewing students incarcerated in a
prison where I was preparing to teach a course on justice through cre-
ative writing, I asked each person why they wanted to take the class.
One response gave me chills. “Prison is like Medusa. If it’s all you
focus on, it will turn you to stone. I need to focus on something else –
so this place don’t do that to me” (Bain, 2013). And for the first time, a
critical question that has echoed in my mind ever since emerged. How
do we keep ourselves from turning to stone?
This work reminds me of verses my mother shared with me when
I was a child: “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were
together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you
yourselves were suffering” (Hebrews 13:3). When I was 15, my broth-
ers and I were invited to perform at a prison concert. It was the late
1980s, and though nervous as hell, we couldn’t pass the opportunity
to share our songs and performance skills with this audience so far
from any we had ever known. When we entered that prison in upstate
New York, we were surrounded by an audience that reminded us of
