An Alternative Model of Music Learning and 'Last Night's Fun': Participatory Music Making In/As Participatory Culture in Irish Traditional Music

Exploring emergent music learning and teaching models facilitated by global Web access can reveal alternative music education practices and delivery systems not seen in "traditional" conservatories and schools. One example of an alternative music learning model comes from the Online Academy of Irish Music (OAIM), a community music "school" specializing in teaching Irish traditional music (IrTrad) and which is situated in both on (www.oaim.ie) and offline (Liscannor, Ireland) contexts. Using Thomas Turino's (2008) ideas of "participatory music making" and Henry Jenkins's (2006) concept of "participatory culture" as frameworks, the purpose of this ongoing ethnographic/ cyberethnographic field study was to explore how Irish traditional music was learned by OIAM's students at its "offline" summer school flute week in July 2013 in Lisconnor, Ireland. While Turino's and Jenkins' ideas come from wildly divergent fields--ethnomusicology and new media respectively--both are based on similar social learning ideals, that, when integrated, have broader implications for music learning and teaching. [This paper was presented at the 9th International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education (2015).]