E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 8, 2023

Understanding and Teaching Music Through Orality:
A Case Study in the Revival and Transmission of the Eastern
European Jewish Folk Music
Mariko MISHIROTokyo University of the Arts
Abstract
This study demonstrates the possibilities of understanding and teaching music through oral learning.
In considering the linkage among culture, human development, and education, scholars haveendeavored to emphasize the importance of oral experiences and to recognize the change in mentality
in the transition from the oral to the literate world. These endeavors have been contrary to thetransmission of knowledge and self-formation through writing and books, which have been dominant,especially since the 19th century. In the understanding and learning of music, oral learning is importantin addition to musical notation and literacy. For example, oral learning, which is characterized byrepetitive listening/imitation activities, and community learning have played important roles in theprocess of the revival and transmission of klezmer music or Eastern European Jewish folk music. In
terms of learning in music classes in elementary and junior high schools in Japan, not only literacy but
also oral learning is considered important for achieving the human development of the child, which is
the goal of Courses of Study.
Key words: Music Education, Orality, Literacy, Eastern European Jewish Folk Music, Characterbuilding.

1. Importance of the oral world in culture and education
In reconsidering the linkage among culture, human development, and education,scholars have endeavored to emphasize the reconfirmation of oral experiences andchanges in the mentality of people in the transition from orality to literacy. This notion isCorrespondence:
Mariko MISHIRO, Tokyo University of the Arts. Email: mishiro.mariko@ms.geidai.ac.jp

Understanding and Teaching Music Through Orality:
A Case Study in the Revival and Transmission of the Eastern European Jewish Folk Music27

in contrast to the transmission of knowledge and self-formation through writing andbooks, which have been prevalent since the 19th century.
Ong (1991) points out that a fundamental difference exists between oral culture andliterate culture in terms of thought and linguistic expression. In an oral culture, the author
cites that human thought is related to speech, and people do not abstractly order,
categorize, explain, or analyze facts, and statements, because they do not read or write.
Therefore, people learn by listening to others, repeating what they hear, memorizing
proverbs, combining and recombining them, or adopting clichéd ways of saying things.
In contrast, in a literate culture, words, and thoughts are more analyzed as words are
written. Without gestures, facial expressions, vocal inflections, or real listeners, written
speech requires a writer to carefully anticipate the expected meaning for any reader andsituation and to enable clear words to work without the aid of any lived context. Therefore,
the art of writing creates a sense of pursuing precision and analytical rigor that areinternalized in the cognition of people. In addition, writing separates the subject from theobject, which, thereby further segments the activity of reflection of the writer. In otherwords, by writing, the mind of the author becomes open not only to the external, objective
world that is distinct from the self but also to the internal self that is in opposition to suchan objective world (Ong 1991:218-219). The skill of writing creates a reflective sense of
self. As previously discussed, the transition from an oral to a literate culture has produced
a great change in the culture and in the consciousness and minds of people.
Illich (1991) posed a question about whether or not the mind acquired by humans
through this transition is reinforced and disseminated by enhanced literacy learning using
new techniques of phycology, management engineering, or electronics in the educationalsettings of today. Once people acquire initial literacy skills, they will no longer concretely
perceive things as they primarily did. Instead, they begin to draw inferences not only on
the basis of their practical experiences but also of assumptions formulated in the language(Illich 1991:112). However, only a contingent link exists between enhanced literacy
learning and the newly acquired mental framework of an individual of perception,
representation, reasoning, creativity, and sense of self. Therefore, the author points outthat the current enhanced literacy learning may diminish the literate mind (Illich
1991:112-113).
Sanders (1998) shared the concept of Illich (1991) and stated that if enhanced
literacy learning leads to the pursuit of only accuracy and clarity in reading and writingin schooling, then children with less experience of the oral world will only be able to read
and write under a standard of correctness imposed by an external force. The author thenargues that acquiring literacy related to the rich experience of the oral world is necessary
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M. MISHIRO

to regain the self-reflective, critically thinking self formed by true literacy (Sanders
1998:13). According to Sanders, in an oral world centered on speaking/listening, children
gain experience in using language to communicate with others and freely use their
imagination. When children enter the literate world, they become capable of considering
abstract rules in relation to concrete events and environments and of taking a critical lookat and orienting themselves.
The common point between Illich and Sanders is that strengthening the propertiesof thought and linguistic expression acquired through true literacy skills is important forthe self-formation of children. Toward this end, considering the change in the humanmind between the pre-literate oral world and the literate world is necessary.

2. Orality and literacy of music
In the case of music, literacy pertains to the ability to read and write sounds andmusic translated into visual symbols such as sheet music. Specifically, it is the ability toread and sing notes on a staff notation at the correct height and length. A musical notation
cannot convey the entire sound of music, but it can contain musical information, even inparts, without time, or space limitations. Furthermore, it can be a means of recalling musicat a later time. Notation enables music to remain intact for centuries and can be replayed
at any time. In addition, similar to writing, being written on a score enables the elaborationand creation of a sophisticated structure. However, even in the case of music based on
notation, such as western classical music, not all stylistic characteristics of music can beconveyed. Moreover, conventions that were assumed in performances in older times,
such as basso continuo and ornaments, are frequently not reflected in the score.
Alternatively, orality pertains to the oral transmission of music, in which a learnerlearns a tune or musical style by being taught by a master in a phrase-by-phrase manner.
This method of transmission is used for many folk songs and folk music worldwide. In
this manner, music reproduction frequently follows a strong rhythmic pattern or uses aclichéd melodic pattern. Musicians are also expected to use traditional sound materials tocreate performances that respond to the situation and the reaction of the audience. ManyJapanese music genres, such as nagauta, gidayu-bushi, and kabuki-bayashi, are genresthat emphasize the orality tradition to master the complex musicality required to produce
stylistically appropriate tones, voices, and ensemble performances (Tokumaru 2016: 240).
It is effective in developing a sense of style and flexible musicality, including variations,because it does not rely on musical notation. Even western classical music requires oral
Symposium: Orality, Image, Memory and Bildung: Toward the Possibility of Educational Study Based on
Kulturwissenschaft

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A Case Study in the Revival and Transmission of the Eastern European Jewish Folk Music

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instruction by a teacher in lessons. In addition, kuchi-shoga (aural cues that use pitchedor rhythmic syllables), which is used in the study on gagaku, shamisen, and various vocal,
and instrumental music of the world, is a form that lies between oral and written forms.
For example, in the learning of Burmese classical songs, a teacher sings part of a melody,and the learner immediately imitates it. The repetition of this action proceeds in which a
songbook with lyrics plays an important role. Although this method is oral, it contains an
aspect in which the written form reconstructs the memory (Inoue 2007).

3. Oral tradition and literacy in the revival and transmission of klezmermusic
To illustrate the effectiveness of orality in music learning, the study focuses on thecase of klezmer music, which is an Eastern European Jewish folk music. Originallypassed down orally for several centuries, young Jewish musicians in the United States
revived this music after the tradition was in danger of dying out in the mid-20th century.
At the time of the revival, the traditional method of oral transmission was already lost,
but literate revivalists extracted the structure and style of the music from the available
materials and provided instruction that emphasized orality. This scenario is an exampleof the manner of the revival of music, which has developed exclusively as an oral culture,in the modern age through oral and written learning methods.
Klezmer music, which was nurtured by Eastern European Jewish communities
since the 16th century, is instrumental ensemble music played by musicians calledklezmorim (singular: klezmer). These musicians performed at weddings and holidays in
Jewish communities to facilitate ceremonies, evoke emotions appropriate to the occasion,and accompany dances. The tunes and performance styles were passed down fromklezmer families by directly learning by ear from the demonstrations of a master. Whenmany Eastern European Jews immigrated to North America since the end of the 19th
century, the center of this music moved to the United States (especially New York), where
it flourished for a time. However, klezmer music declined during the 1940s due to various
factors, including the assimilation of second-generation Jewish immigrants to theAmerican way of life, the collapse of the Eastern European Jewish communities due tothe Holocaust, and the emphasis on the Israeli/Hebrew culture and the shunning of the
Yiddish culture that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel. However, in the
mid-1970s, young American Jewish musicians of classical, jazz, and folk music begancollecting, researching, and performing klezmer music in search of their roots. In contrast
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to other musical revivals of the same period, klezmer music had no homeland to returnto, such that these musicians reconstructed their music by finding and listening to oldrecords and learning directly from a few performers of previous eras. They repeatedly
listened to SP records from circa 1920s and carefully noting as many details of theperformances as possible and strictly imitating them to learn the tunes and styles. They
also formed master–student relationships with the surviving performers and invited themas lecturers at Jewish music festivals.
Since the revival, Jewish music festivals have become central venues for klezmer
music education. Various Jewish music festivals are held dependent on their purpose andorganizers. They are annually or biannually held for a few days to a few weeks mainly inNorth America, Europe, and Israel. Among them was KlezKamp in New York, which
was the forerunner of all Jewish music festivals since 1985. Henry Sapoznik, one of therevivalists, founded the KlezKamp to promote the Jewish culture, which was held every
December until 2014. Other music festivals were initiated in other areas with similar
events based on the success of the KlezKamp. This study demonstrated the characteristics
of Jewish music festivals, which were mainly based on the participant observations of theresearcher at two festivals, namely, Yiddish Summer Weimar, and Yiddish New York.
The first characteristic of klezmer music education at Jewish music festivals is theestablishment of learning in the community. The first music festival, KlezKamp, createdthe space and time for the transmission of klezmer music after the cessation of theexistence of the oral world of the Jewish community. At the time of its founding,programs were held exclusively for klezmer music; however, as various Jewish people
from different generations came together in search of a place to stay and as a result of
their demands, a diverse program was established. This program included not only
klezmer music but also vocal music, dance, language, literature, folklore, and cooking,among others. Thus, spontaneously, a place was created in which people could
experience not only klezmer music but also various forms of the Yiddish culture. For afew weeks or months every year, many people, including repeat visitors, share a common
culture through their bodies, which creates a cultural community and a temporary modern
re-creation of a lost Jewish community. For a few participants, the festival became an
important part of their lives with their children growing up with the festival and Jewish
coming-of-age ceremonies and weddings that occur during the festival.
In this context, participants are taught music by ear and mouth in principle. In
addition, an environment is created through coordination with other programs in which
participants can perform music in response to the movements of dancers as they unfold
before their eyes. These performances occur in the atmosphere and emotion of traditional
Symposium: Orality, Image, Memory and Bildung: Toward the Possibility of Educational Study Based on
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A Case Study in the Revival and Transmission of the Eastern European Jewish Folk Music

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Jewish rituals and in response to the reactions of the audience. In other words, they canlearn music within the oral world.
The second characteristic of klezmer education at these festivals is that learning
occurs through the body, that is, listening to the performance of an instructor, imitating itwith voice or instrument, and memorizing it through repetition. Through this learning
method, learners accumulate, and memorize the unique phrases and rhythmic patterns of
this music. As such, when they perform, they can draw on these notions in their style andexpression. Learning by ear enables them to acquire subtle styles of phrasing, intonation,
accent, rhythm, tone color, and ornamentation that cannot be expressed by musicalnotation. In addition, doing so promotes an understanding of the structure of the clichéd
melodic patterns that compose the melody and how they are spelled together. Lastly, theperformance is not fixed; thus, the performance of each player varies, which creates free,and varied performances because no musical notation is used.
As previously discussed, education at Jewish music festivals is orally conducted
through communal and physical learning, but it is also supported by literacy. The reason
is that instruction at Jewish music festivals is a result of the revivalists listening to thedetails of numerous old recordings and deriving the regularities involved in thecompositions and performance styles in klezmer music. Originally, klezmer music nearlylacked a theory for performance or composition and concepts or terminology for styleand structure. Thus, the revivalists addressed extracting these regularities through theanalysis of the remaining sound recordings and then created an effective method forlearning such knowledge and concepts along with the oral tradition. For example, they
identified the modal system that forms the basis for melodies and chords, typical melodic
patterns, and characteristic chord progressions. In addition, they realized that playing
melodies in heterophony is important, in which each player in an ensemble presents
different details instead of playing in unison and to vary it when a melody is repetitive.
These theories and aesthetics were not verbalized or systematized in the oral tradition of
the past. Instead, they were shared in the experience of playing. Once the tradition broke
down, however, they were passed on through musical notation and words in the present.
Thus, klezmer music education at Jewish music festivals succeeded inreconstructing and transmitting a large part of the characteristics of the oral culture
through orality and literacy. In this manner, it was revived as music for the modern age
instead of preserved and protected as the music of the past. In principle, music is not
written in musical notation. Instead, it is listened to, imitated, and memorized, which,thereby, promote an in-depth understanding of the unique verses, nuances, and otheraspects of the music. In addition, forming a cultural community render possible the
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learning of music in an oral world, which enables performances to be adapted to
traditional social functions and the current situation.

4. Importance of orality in school music education
The example of klezmer music illustrates the importance of orality in the revival andtransmission of a vanishing traditional culture, which can be partially applicable to musiceducation in schools. According to the Courses of Study for elementary and junior highschool students (announced in 2017), the goals of music education include not only theacquisition of musical knowledge and skills, but also, beyond that, an understanding of
the relationship among musical mood, structure, and background, and the diversity ofmusic. It also includes the ability to express oneself through music according to the image
that one intends to express. In addition, one may infer that music learning is positioned
as a subject deeply related to the self-formation of children by fostering the developmentof cognitive and perceptive abilities related to music, such as expression, evaluation anddetermination, and the cultivation of sensitivity and emotionality relative to music. What,then, is the necessity of learning through orality for self-formation in music learning?
First, orality in music education practice is considered effective in enabling children
to listen to music without being bound by musical notation and to form and express theirself-image. The fixed nature of musical notation can lead children to constantly ascertain
the expressions of others and their own and their thoughts as right or wrong, which canhinder their natural feelings and thoughts toward and free expression in music. In addition,
children can directly recognize and perceive the sounds of music in terms of intensity,
tempo, timbre, and vocal nuance, among others, which cannot be written in notations.
Furthermore, children can independently perceive musical moods and structure, because
the perception of sounds as sounds (without words or symbols) is independent of themusical literacy of children. In addition, children can obtain an experiential understandingof concepts, such as rhythm, and scales, as well as the elements and forms that composea piece of music, by repetitive listening using the ears, imitating using the voice or
instruments, and experiencing using the body.
Second, oral learning enables communication through not only language but also
the body and voice and enables collaborative music-making along with connections toplaces, situations, and people. By exchanging and sharing voices, sounds, and physicalactions between teachers and students or among students, one can learn the sensitivities
and thoughts of others through their reactions and situations and changes in places andSymposium: Orality, Image, Memory and Bildung: Toward the Possibility of Educational Study Based on
Kulturwissenschaft

Understanding and Teaching Music Through Orality:
A Case Study in the Revival and Transmission of the Eastern European Jewish Folk Music33

devise one’s personal thoughts and expressions.
Third, the oral means of learning is effective for understanding the diversity of music.
In junior high school, one of the goals of music learning is to respect the inherent valueof different types of music and to enable students to understand their diversity. In addition,“using musical views and ideas,” as cited in the goal of the music course common toelementary and junior high schools, does not refer to a single viewpoint. Instead, it
expects students to acquire multiple views according to various types of music worldwide.
Therefore, recognizing the characteristics, and styles of various music not only asknowledge but also as experiences is necessary for children, such that they can directly
receive the unique narrative and expression of each music and understand them while
they expand their sensitivity.
For this reason, scholars are currently pursuing the research and implementation ofteaching methods that utilize the traditional teaching methods of each music, including
oral tradition, instead of the staff notation, which is associated with the characteristics ofwestern music. Since the beginning of the Heisei era, Japanese traditional music was nolonger taught using the stave notation but was required to adopt teaching methods, suchas traditional Japanese singing techniques and voice color through singing folk songs(Kojima 2018: 15-16). In this manner, the perspective of fostering an attitude ofawareness and respect for the positive qualities of the country and its local traditionalmusic culture is adopted. In addition, kuchi-shoga (oral singing for learning) can capture
the entirety of the tones, melodies, rhythms, and techniques of certain Japanese
instruments. Thus, scholars endeavor to use it to learn the characteristics of traditionalmusic expression, methods of transmission, and the relationship between Japanese
language and music (Tokumaru 2019: 2-3).
In the United States, where multicultural music education is advanced, Campbell(2004) proposed the “World Music Teaching Method” as a realistic strategy for
integrating various forms of music worldwide into the classroom in situations where
teachers are unable to perform and possess limited instruments and audiovisual resources.
This method consists of five activities as follows:(1) listening with attention to the various elements of music to guide children toward
the characteristics of the music in question;(2) listening physically by clapping and singing to actively engage them in the music;(3) reproducing music using voices and instruments based on memories they gained
from listening;(4) deepening their knowledge of the background of the music to help themunderstand music as a human activity; andE-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 8, 2023

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M. MISHIRO(5) creating songs according to the singing and structural characteristics of the music
they have learned to encourage them to reaffirm their awareness of thecharacteristics of music and to listen to it in a more conscious manner (Kanemitsu2016).
Clearly, this teaching method focuses on listening and imitating, which forms thebasis of oral learning, and on connecting it with creating music. Campbell mentions that
listening is typically the primary or sole method for learners to learn music in various
cultures. The reason is not only to become familiar with musical elements but also tounderstand pitch and rhythm, among others. It can be also a central process in music
learning in schools. In addition, the author mentions that listening must give way tocreating, and although learners may initially make mistakes when singing or playing
music they only partially understand, such mistakes can be corrected orally or by listening
to the correct sound (Campbell 2018:107). To learn about diverse music in the worldalong with its cultural backgrounds, school teachers need to adopt oral learning, which
was traditionally used in many musical cultures, and help children view music from theperspective of cultural relativism.
Today, compact disks, and online music distribution services provide access tovarious music any time and any place. However, a concern emerges that if music issimply accepted as a given, then it may not lead to personal development or the exerciseof creativity. In the case of klezmer music, the revivalists created a space for people tolearn about musical culture based on the oral traditions. In addition, they learned to listen
to/imitate the performances of their masters with the increase in interaction between them.
As a result, the innate qualities of klezmer music were transmitted without being lost.
One may infer that klezmer music was not simply revived as music of the past but was
re-created as music that is alive today. To render music education a truly effective place
for human development in terms of communication, connection with others, and theformation of self-image, then assigning a place for oral education along with literacy
education is desirable.

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Kulturwissenschaft