Thesis Supervisor
Dr. John Wilkerson
Mass Bands, HBCU Influence, and the Future of Culturally Relevant, Community-Driven Music Education.
Traditional summer programs gatekeep through cost and cultural distance — effectively locking out students from low-income and minority communities before a single note is played.
The scale of exclusion is not a rhetorical point — it is documented, measurable, and systemic.
Sources: DCI fee disclosures; Arts Education Data Project (2022); literature review of peer-reviewed databases.
Three mass band programs studied in parallel across an eleven-week window, with data triangulated from four sources to defend against single-case bias.
IRB-FY25-26-1166 · Approved 17 February 2026 · Thematic analysis with inductive and deductive coding.
Selective, short-cycle summer ensemble drawing high-achieving students from many high schools into a single intensive training environment.
Year-round neighborhood ensemble staffed by HBCU alumni and local volunteers, serving as a musical sanctuary and mentorship hub.
HBCU summer program hosted on a college campus, immersing students in collegiate band culture, leadership seminars, and peer instruction.
Teaching that affirms students' cultural identities while maintaining academic rigor.
Pedagogy that actively preserves and grows cultural traditions inside the classroom.
Redefines assets students bring: resilience, social networks, aspirational capital.
Near-peer instruction as a reliable path to skill acquisition and leadership.
Critical Race Theory (Delgado & Stefancic) structures the reading of systemic barriers in Theme 5.
Repertoire, rehearsal language, and performance practice were built from students' lived musical culture — creating congruence where traditional programs create dissonance.
Students learn the technique and learn how to teach it. They return home as section leaders, raising the baseline of under-resourced home programs without adding a single hire.
These programs operate less like standalone ensembles and more like relational ecosystems — pulling family, alumni, and local stakeholders into a web of mutual support.
Parents, siblings, and extended family provide logistical and emotional backing.
Former students come back to teach, mentor, and model career pathways.
Volunteer clinicians and neighborhood musicians extend the instructional bench.
Campus exposure lifts college aspirations, especially for first-generation students.
Participants improved measurably across five musical domains — proving that culturally responsive instruction does not come at the cost of technical excellence.
Documented across all three cases · See Appendix D: Musical Growth and Proficiency Indicators
Across all three cases, programs faced documented gaps in funding, staffing, facility access, and long-term sustainability — met by adaptive leadership and unpaid volunteer labor.
Structural adversity did not undermine student achievement. It accelerated leadership development — forcing programs to distribute instruction to students, which in turn produced the train-the-trainer model at the heart of this study.