By Aline Bouwman, Marketing and Communications

As she was waiting to board a flight to Rwanda last summer, Hazel Fairbairn was asked – more than once – if she was a missionary heading to Africa to do religious aid work. 

In fact, the Douglas College Music Technology instructor was on her way to the Rwanda School of Creative Arts and Music to join five Douglas music students on a special project that would see the group taking lessons from Rwandans on music, education and the power of community. 

Now, Hazel is using what she learned in Rwanda to transform music education at home and help her students find their own rhythm through a unique teaching model.  

Read more: This Douglas College Music Diploma alumn turned her music passion into a profession. 

Flipping the narrative 

Located in the capital city, Kigali, the Rwanda School of Creative Arts and Music (RSCAM) emphasizes rehearsal and performance under a unique evaluation model Hazel calls “play and feedback.” Through this model, students play their music in front of a jury and receive immediate verbal commentary. Students then incorporate that feedback and come back to rehearsals for further rounds of critique as they hone their skills and performance. 

For Hazel, this educational framework levels a profound challenge at the individuality and hierarchy inherent to music education in Canada, and the Western world at large.  

“The style of teaching in Rwanda made me realize how important it is to give honest and candid feedback to students,” she says. “Seeing how music is taught in Rwanda has shown me that community-oriented values can coexist with educational rigour and musical excellence.”  

Hazel points out that Western education models still carry the legacy of colonialism, and music education is no exception. She explains that modern music education has not diverted much from classical pedagogy, which builds on a laddered learning structure based on individual progression, hierarchical instruction and theoretical examination. 

That way of learning is so saturated in Western education that it can be difficult to imagine what it could look like under a different structure. The paradigm shift required to undertake such a reimagining, Hazel believes, is precisely what Rwanda has to offer to musicians, teachers and students of music. 

“There’s no real reason why instrumental skills couldn’t be taught in a more oral tradition, which focuses on listening and repetition as the main means of learning,” Hazel says. “Auditory-based teaching methods like the play-and-feedback model emphasize community learning rather than the individual quest for perfection.” 

Read more: Hands-on learning prepares Music Technology students at Douglas College for a successful career in the industry. 

The power of community 

While strides are being made to decolonize the classroom in Canada, Hazel points out that stubborn colonial narratives persist. It is still a widely held belief that Westerners travel to African nations to bring education, enlightenment or development. 

But back home in Canada, the opposite is true. Hazel believes it is Western educators who can learn from diverse cultural contexts and be transformed by African education.  

As for the music students who took part in the project in Rwanda, the trip not only allowed them to experience a different educational culture, but it also resounded with their own learning styles. 

Jussarah Bellow, a second-year Music Technology student, highlights how the communal focus at RSCAM helped her come out of her shell, musically speaking. 

“It was a welcoming and joyful environment to be in,” Jussarah says. “In the past, I was shy with others in showing my musical abilities, but during the trip the musicians we met helped me grow in my musical journey. They were so encouraging, and I became much more comfortable on stage.” 

Hazel agrees that music students learn best through doing. “Instruction should be about facilitating rather than instructing,” she adds. “Travelling to Rwanda has renewed my conviction that music is not about individual excellence – it is about the power to create community and reach more people.” 

In fact, individual performance was not a common sight at RSCAM at all.  

“I never heard anybody playing on their own,” Hazel says. “I’m not sure I ever saw anybody in Rwanda doing anything on their own. Everything is about community. Everything is about connection and how people are building something together. And music is such a beautiful place to do that.” 

Learn more about Douglas College’s Music and study abroad programs on our website.