What the world needs now is love, sweet love… and a better conceptualisation of harmony. Through a brief survey of Eastern and Western philosophical positions, both ancient and modern, it becomes possible to characterise Western notions of music harmony as narrowly defined, dated, ethno-centric, and Euro-centric. A bold re-constitution of harmony—more culturally inclusive and applicable to the broad range of musics we perform in music classrooms—helps music teachers fend off elementised, compartmentalised, constricted views of music harmony. In this practical session, we explore an alternative framework that asks students to perform and compose with greater attention to the harmonising features of music at the micro and macro level, far beyond chords and keys. After exploring prosody, music production and artist persona, we go further consider global, liberated definitions of harmony as we cultivate performance-audience relationships and the important social functions of music making.
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