Musical Moments That Matter: Is a Multicultural Human Subject Possible?

DEBORAH BRADLEY is a Ph.D. candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her dissertation entitled Global Song, Global Citizens? Multicultural Choral Music Education and the Community Youth Choir: Constituting the Multicultural Human Subject, investigates how a predominantly world music choral curriculum functions as performative in adolescent identity construction. The research seeks to understand how engaging with world choral music (global song) within an anti-racism pedagogy may serve to disrupt subjectivities of race, nationality, and ethnicity, and contribute to a new self-understanding as a multicultural human subject. Deborah holds both an M.Mus. (Education) and a B. Mus. from the University of Toronto, where she studied choral conducting with Doreen Rao, and organ with Douglas Bodle. She has been an Instructor in Music Education at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, since 1997, where she teaches Keyboard Skills and Accompanying. She is the author of Make Every Note Beautiful: A Case Study of the Artistic Pedagogy of Douglas Bodle, published by the Canadian Music Education Research Centre. In 1997, Deborah founded the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir, which has grown to 85 members in 3 instructional levels. She is also the Director of Music for Humber Valley United Church in Toronto.