Chapter 7: Valuing Cultural Assets

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) exemplify the core principle of consciousness and cultural empowerment by valuing students’ cultural assets as essential foundations for meaningful learning and artistic development. Rather than viewing students through a deficit lens, HBCU music programs recognize community, familial, and artistic knowledge as essential tools for academic and creative excellence. Chapter 7 examines how Fisk University, Tennessee State University (TSU), and Florida A&M University (FAMU) center Black musical traditions not as supplements to the curriculum, but as its very core.

At Fisk, faculty engage in historiographic and storytelling pedagogies that position students as inheritors of a living musical archive, affirming the spirituals and oral histories as critical forms of knowledge. At TSU, educators embrace an ethnographic, student-driven approach aligned with the music-teacher-as-producer model. This approach encourages creative autonomy and industry relevance, allowing students to draw from their musical roots to shape commercially viable, award-winning work. At FAMU, culturally sustaining pedagogy integrates students’ lived musical experiences, from gospel and jazz to marching band, into a curriculum that resists assimilation and reclaims cultural space, even amid external political pressures.