Meme Engineers: children as producers of musical culture

This paper examines the ways in which young children construct and negotiate musical meaning as song-makers in a post-modern consumerist musical world. A critical analysis of the presentation of music in two popular Australian children’s television programmes (Play School and Hi-5) and the ways in which such media impact upon children’s constructions of music and musical understanding is presented. This analysis provides a context for the examination of tensions that exist between a modernist account of what constitutes musical understanding in the young child, and an account that is cognisant of post-modern aesthetics. The implications of this concerning views of children’s musical development and curriculum decision making are discussed and a view of the child as an active agent in the construction of her musical worlds is illustrated through an examination of the musical narratives of a 4-year-old child.