How do OISE Library’s historical collections define music in Ontario, and how can we challenge that understanding of music?

Two songbooks and a letter from the publisher

While browsing the music books in our Ontario Historical Education Collections, I found a broad range of materials dating all the way back to 1883. Some of them were very delicate, their pages browned with age; others, though well over eighty years old, still held up to the test of time, their covers looking as though they could still be sold at a bookstore today.

The first time I flipped through them, it was beautiful and so intriguing – I could see how Western music education slowly advanced through time in Ontario, going from an art barely taught in schools to one now taught throughout the province in a great variety of ways. As a cello teacher myself, I was completely taken in by how I could see the slow changes in music pedagogy. The second time I flipped through the materials, I found other little traces of its users left behind – pencil marks, fingerprints, even a page glued over with a piece of paper to avoid copyright infringement, still stuck firm nearly a century later. The third time I flipped through them, my fascination with the books and my goals for research began to change.

When I first began browsing the collection, the question I had in mind was simple: What does our collection tell us about the evolution of Music Education in Ontario? However, as I looked through the music in our collection and the history being taught through this music, the question became: How does our collection define music in Ontario, and how can we challenge that understanding of music? To answer this question, I take a critical view on the music education materials presented in this blog post and discuss how it upholds the white racial hierarchy imposed by a settler society. By examining the evolution of music books published in Ontario across time, we can begin to understand what else is being taught by music curriculums and thus begin to challenge the invisible message.

The music books discussed in this blog post and our current OHEC display are very standard. That is, they do exactly what they proclaim to do: they are filled with sheet music, they talk about how to make music, they sometimes talk about the history of music, and they teach students how to appreciate music. They are, in every sense of the word, normal music books, chosen to display examples of what was being taught in Ontario over time.

However, that is where the danger lies: the normalcy of it. The vast majority of the music in these books – the songs, the techniques, the instruments, the history – is white settler music, while any other music is given little other than a token thought. Western music is simply called music, while any other music is given an additional identifier, creating a sense of othering or exoticizing non-Western music. In doing so, this definition of music – the idea that music itself is mainly white music – enforces the larger idea of white supremacy and continues its oppression of non-white peoples and their cultures.

Two textbooks of the same series, named The Public School Music Reader and The High School Music Reader, both by John W. Tufts

The oldest book in our collection, The Public School Music Reader by John W. Tufts, was written in 1883. Let us take a moment to situate this book in the context of Canadian history: in 1883, it was only 16 years after Canadian Confederation in 1867. At this time, Canada was still finding its footing as a burgeoning “country”. Ontario, populated with less than 2 million people at the time (as opposed to 16.3 million today), followed these footsteps. The newly established settler government, concerned that its idea of a “white Canada” was being threatened, had recently signed the 1876 Indian Act, which was designed to force First Nations peoples into assimilation by eradicating culture.

In this same time period, music education was not a standard part of schooling in Ontario. The Public School Music Reader was one of the very first textbooks to try to standardize music education in Ontario. Within this book is a series of songs written only by European and white Canadian settler composers, designed as a way to introduce students to the love of music. In this, we can also already see the hidden message threading through music education: by only focusing on white music and completely ignoring all other forms of music, it silences those other forms of music, further enforcing the settler government’s idea of a “white Canada.” Consequently, it also sets the foundation for music education in Ontario – one which is built on white supremacy.

Was Tufts being malicious or trying to be explicitly racist as he wrote the book? Probably not. He was likely simply sharing what he knew with the true intention of teaching music to others. But he lived and worked in a settler society built on genocide. Regardless of intention, The Public School Music Reader contributed to enforcing the dominance of white culture above all else.

As music education evolved in Ontario, its colonial roots only became more entrenched. By the 1930s, music education was commonplace in Ontario schools. The Singing Period series and its accompanying Teacher’s Manuals continued the tradition of mainly teaching white music in schools. However, with the end of the Second World War, Canadian music books began to put greater emphasis on “Canadian pride and identity.” The war saw a huge rise in nationalism in Canada, and this was reflected in the music books published at the end of the war.

One of the books in our collection, The Canadian Singer, Book 4 by John W. Beattie, was published in 1947 and filled with nearly two hundred pages of songs, most of them written by white composers. Just inside the front cover of the book is a dedication to the students, expressing the hope that they would learn about “the people who have helped to build our country.” Just a few pages later, we find a page with some brief historical context for the music in the book. Titled “Music in the New World,” the book declares that “The Americas were colonized, settled, and developed by people from the Old World. ...many more came to make homes in new and uncrowded countries. [...] So America became a great storehouse of Old World folklore” (7).

An open songbook with a chantey named “Blow, Ye Winds” and an illustration of men on a ship

By including this dedication and historical text in his musical songbook, Beattie makes it clear who he considered to be “the people who built this country.” In a few sentences, he erases the genocide of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island in his historical retelling. Instead, he presents a whitewashed version of history while also appealing to Canadian nationalism. This, when taken in consideration with the choice of music presented within the songbook, creates a rather insidious underlying message presented not only by Beattie, but also his publishers and the authorities that approved of this narrative. It tells the reader: this is the music and history of Canada. Anything else does not matter to us. The vision of a white Canada is presented, loud and clear.

1967 brought a huge change. This year marked the Centennial of Canadian Confederation, and celebrations were thrown across the country to celebrate a century of “independence” for the settlers on stolen land. In this same year, policymakers in Ontario revised their arts curriculums, and the music curriculum was changed. Before this, Ontario’s music education mostly focused on singing and choirs, with only one little paragraph that mentioned instrumental music. 1967 changed this with a brand-new, separate curriculum entirely devoted to instrumental music. At this point, Western classical music had also changed a lot since the beginning of the century thanks to the quick advances in technology. However, the change in musical medium did not bring much change to whose music was being taught. The invisible message that connected Ontario’s music classes to the settler Canadian government remained the same: only white music was worth being taught.

A quick glance inside the 1967 textbook Search For A New Sound gives us a snapshot of Ontario’s attitudes at the time. Throughout the book, there is a larger focus on instrumental music. On pages 60-61, there is an excerpt from a brand-new genre of music that challenges the boundaries of what music really is. Page 87 displays music for a magnetic tape. At the back of the book, there is even a recorder fingering chart. However, the colonial narrative remains the same, this time in a more explicit manner. The page titled “Primitive Instruments” only displays African instruments, while early European music is named “Early Music” or called a “Troubadour Song.” The one Chinese song present uses the made-up lyrics “yai yai yai, hai yai yai” like a mockery of the Chinese language. The page on African American Spirituals states that these spirituals are very similar to traditional white work songs, because it they are “spontaneous compositions to lighten the work load”, completely disregarding the entire history of enslavement (110). There is not a single mention of Indigenous music or its history, but there is an entire section dedicated to white Canadian composers. And, as it has been before, it frames all white music as normal, regular music, while non-white music is othered, degraded, and whitewashed.

A textbook, opened to two pages titled “Primitive Instruments.” According to its captions, of the instruments pictured are from Africa.

The music books published after this book keep this settler-focused narrative. Folk Songs of Canada, Choral Edition, 10th edition (published 1971) prides itself on the Canadian spirit; it allegedly has one Inuk song, but uses a slur in its title and has no clear records of its source. Solos For Schools, (published 1979), the only series of instrumental books in our collection, has one Korean song. As with before, the rest of the music in these books is white music. The non-white music is tokenized, exoticized, barely touched upon except in passing.

Sentiments that appear to be progressive at first glance – but are, in truth, still perpetuating a colonial narrative – appear in Canada: Its Music (published 1989). Though a section of the book is dedicated to Indigenous music, discussing the musical traditions of the Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuit peoples (12-13) or the Métis people (46-47), it only dedicates four of its one hundred and twelve pages to them. These sections are only a token acknowledgement, titled “Canada’s Earliest Music” or “Folk Songs of the Saskatchewan Métis.” In doing so, it implies to the reader that Indigenous and Métis music only belongs in the past. It implies that their culture belongs to the settler country of Canada, and that the colonial government is the now the true legitimate way of understanding the history of these Lands. It acknowledges their existence, but only to as a way to claim superiority.

A soft cover songbook, a spiral-bound teacher’s manual, and a cassette tape

The settler-colonial narrative is not always easy to identify, nor is it easy to challenge. The books I have discussed so far, at least, have always displayed a historical narrative in some form. But what about books that do not explicitly do so? What about books that really seem to be neutral? Are they really neutral? Take, for instance, specialty books such as A Music Reading Program for Ukelele: Teacher’s Manual (published 1982), or Surfing in the Elements: The Arts (published 2003). The ukelele book focuses entirely on technical skills like playing chords or reading music, while Surfing the Elements only teaches students how to use computer programs for music. Are these books really perpetuating the settler narrative, or is that simply not within their scope at all as technical books? How could you possibly challenge the settler narrative through a book dedicated to teaching students how to use music production software?

Alternatively, let us look at these books through a different lens. Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist (2019) posits that it is not enough to simply be “not racist;” if you are not actively being anti-racist, then you are being racist. The appearance of neutrality is another way to silently maintain the status quo. With this in mind, the apolitical neutrality of technique books truly comes into question, and we come to understand more of what is not being said. The ukelele technique book ignored the rich history of the instrument and its great importance in Hawaiian music and culture. The music used in exercises for Surfing the Elements was still primarily white music. The invisible message which upheld white music and history was still there, threading through the books.

A songbook set against a background of musical flashcards.

History and culture are deeply connected with each other, and music is no exception. Scholar Kristin Ann Hass notes throughout her book Blunt Instruments (2023) that what makes the settler narrative so insidious is that it is systematically embedded in all parts of everyone’s daily life, and that despite its appearance of neutrality, it is always anything but. By making music education a requirement in Ontario schools, its students are taught about the art and its wonders; but by centering white music and barely mentioning any other forms of music, the very normalized word of music now becomes another tool to enforce the dominance of a white cultural narrative. In doing so, we stop questioning why this is normalized and instead accept unequal racial hierarchies as “the way things are.”

This is not to say that Western music should not be taught at all. On the contrary: it is a wonderful, beautiful art that brings joy to many, and certainly has its own incredibly important place in Western history and culture. As a music teacher myself, I could talk about the joys of it for a long time. Music education has come very far in Ontario, with many young students going on to play music professionally around the world.

Rather, we need to think critically about what else is being taught by the music curriculums. When the music being taught throughout schools are mostly white, when the musicians that we listen to are mainly white artists, what ends up being normalized is the idea that white music is the core of music. Any other music instead becomes othered, exoticized, tacked on as a token piece at the back of a book or in the middle of a concert, or stolen and whitewashed to fit the tastes of white audiences.

Change is not easy to implement. It is slow and requires a great deal of work, especially because these hierarchies are built to last and resist any attempts to topple them. But it needs to happen. The first step towards change is understanding the hidden message behind the cultural education we are given. Only then can we begin to challenge it.

To view a display of these music learning materials and more, come visit our Ontario Historical Education Collections (OHEC) display on the third floor of the OISE library!

For more information about our historical collections or to make a research appointment, please see the OHEC Research Guide.

The Invisible Message: Music Education in Ontario, from 1883 – 2003

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