Music Education and "Music for Uniting the Americas"

The field of music education was engaged in unprecedented cross-cultural efforts with Latin American music educators and Latin American music during the period between 1939 and 1946. These inter-American efforts related to the Good Neighbor policies with an emphasis on education and culture in diplomacy. Music educators collaborated with governmental and non-governmental organizations to undertake activities including the development of curricular materials incorporating Latin American music for use in US schools and participating in person-to-person exchanges between American and Latin American music educators. The two genres of music deemed appropriate for schools, folk music and art music, were reinforced in the inter American educational projects. This combination of efforts to diversify curricular materials and cross-cultural exchanges provided new opportunities for assessing the representation of Latin American musical cultures in US music education.