Abstract
Photo of Lisa Martin courtesy of the author
In reviewing the contributions to this issue, I found a sense of comfort in the good work that continues to be done in our field. Christy Go opens our minds and ears to the world of K-pop music, and Sangmi Kang and Ji Won Lee help us create safe musical spaces for all students in our classrooms. Keri Miksza and Pete Miksza offer a sobering perspective on school privatization, Hsuan-Wen Juan encourages us to approach improvisation from a unique vantage point, and Matthew Rotjan and George Nicholson explore how the notion of recomposition can spark our inner creative.
The constant rhythm of good work affords a familiar hum that soothes and grounds us. Even when our efforts cast light on hurdles that complicate our aims as a profession, good work reminds us of common ground and that music education continues to make forward strides. Good work helps us feel connected. It provides a steadiness and foundation to which we can return.
Of course, that good work goes beyond scholarship in our field. The good is everywhere, from students supporting one another in a collaborative composition project to a teacher covering the missing bass clarinet part in a colleague’s concert. In the March 2025 issue, I mentioned how we can find grounding by focusing on what we can control, and so much of the good we choose is a manifestation of that which we can control in our day-to-day lives. In this way, the steady hum of good work is essential for both the profession and our personal well-being.
Even as I write about all this good, I feel myself sinking into contentment. Scholars Cordaro, Brackett, and Glass describe contentment as “perceived completeness” or the “perception that the present situation is enough and entire.” 1 This sense of completeness can be foundational to feeling connected to oneself and to others. 2 I sometimes find myself leaning into good for the promise of such contentment because it shapes a much needed sanctuary. Indeed, contentment has many positive attributes, reflecting a harmony with and acceptance of the present moment. For me, witnessing good work in music education brings these feelings to the fore.
Contentment, however, is sometimes conflated with stagnation, complacency, or ambivalence. The assumption can be that if we are content with who we are and what we do, then we are not also working to grow, change, or tackle the challenges around us; we instead mark time in a place devoid of motivation, engagement, or satisfaction. In fact, contentment is not a passive state; rather, it can provide a platform for us to be receptive to and ready for change. Contentment can reveal resilience and bandwidth to evolve. When I think to the times in my life where I felt most satisfied in both my personal and professional lives, it was then where I was also most primed to flourish beyond the cocoon of my contentment. Feelings of contentment, then, might also be our cue to look ahead—not as a directive but rather as an invitation.
Author Elizabeth Gilbert once shared, “The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world.” 3 I imagine such gifts not as tender and timidly offered but as wild, assured, and brave, much like the barbaric yawp sounded by Walt Whitman in his poem Song of Myself. Whitman writes: “I too am not a bit tamed / I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” 4 Contentment affords a place for generative action so that we might simultaneously embrace the steady hum of all that is good while also sounding our barbaric yawp in response to all that needs attention.
In our work as music educators, it is essential to be able to hold both a sense of completeness and an awareness of what could—and should—be changed. Rooting ourselves in one space or the other—content or discontent—ignores the natural dynamic between these states of being. Much like the yin and yang dynamic Hsuan-Wen Juan describes in her article, content and discontent can represent “contrary yet mutually dependent energies,” the interplay of which can serve as the seed of transformation. We can celebrate our elementary choir’s recent performance, find grounding in the way our students collaborate in chamber groups, and embrace the joyful chaos of a field trip while also making space to be vigilant, to confront, to rally, to persist, and to grow.
I encourage us each to sink into the steady hums of our work, and I am eager for the barbaric yawps.
