Envisioning Orff and Kodály Today: A Century of Possibilities Seized and Missed in Culturally Diverse Music Education

What would have been the work of Orff and Kodály if they had been surrounded by the sounds of children deeply engaged in West African ewe drumming and dancing, Indonesian gamelan, Caribbean calypso, Turkish aşık songs, and Saami yoiking? If Orff could have handed over his smart phone to Kodály and said: “Listen to the incredible interlocking patterns in this children’s song from Burundi, the microtones in this Indian raga, the harmonies of this isicathamiya choir from South Africa, the circular breathing that supports the sound of the Australian Indigenous didgeridoo. Imagine our children, in Germany and Hungary, and anywhere in the world, working with these musical sounds and ideas!” Using two theoretical frameworks and this slightly unconventional setting, two senior music education scholars who have been active in projects and advocacy for including musical sounds, concepts and pedagogies from different cultures for over four decades trace the history of cultural diversity over the past 100 years as a sequence of opportunities seized and/or missed, reflecting on the significance of each for the two frameworks, and the implications for music education in the second quarter of the 21st century.