As a composer who has spent much of my life negotiating cultural identity in music, I have learned that the question of what counts is never neutral. It is shaped by institutions, expectations, and by whose stories are amplified and whose are silenced. When I was a student, I rarely saw my own musical background reflected in the classroom. The training I received, while rigorous and valuable, often pointed away from where I came from, as if legitimacy depended on postcode, style, or a particular kind of playlist.

That sense of being out of step with the mainstream of music education has remained with me. It is one of the reasons I seek collaboration with artists and educators who are asking critical questions about who belongs in educational spaces, and under what conditions.

This project, developed in collaboration with Dr Michelle Stead, began from a shared concern with these questions. At first glance, the choice to focus on girlie pop might seem surprising, especially from a composer whose practice spans experimental, electroacoustic, and screen-based work. But the rationale is clear. Pop music targeted at girls and young women is not simply overlooked; it is actively devalued. It is often regarded as too commercial, too emotional, or too superficial to serve as a foundation for serious compositional or technical study. Yet it is one of the most complex, innovative, and culturally influential genres of the past several decades.

We made a deliberate decision to build a classroom project around this genre. In doing so, we aim to challenge dominant narratives that frame music technology as a masculine-coded domain, where competence is measured through genres associated with sonic aggression or subcultural capital. As scholars such as Wajcman (2004) and Faulkner (2001) argue, technological systems are not neutral. They reflect and reproduce cultural norms, including those related to gender. The music technology classroom is no exception.

In this project, students are asked to create original compositions in the stylistic language of girlie pop. They compose basslines, program drum patterns, develop harmonic progressions, and construct melodic material using a range of tools introduced through structured instruction. These are core production skills, but applied within a genre that is culturally coded as feminine. The objective is not to simplify the task or make it more accessible through aesthetic softening. Rather, it is to question why certain genres are routinely considered more appropriate for music technology education than others.

This is not about surface-level inclusion or novelty. It is about challenging the assumptions that underpin genre hierarchies and production pedagogy. By placing girlie pop at the centre of this project, we invite students—especially those who may not see themselves reflected in traditional music tech curricula—to explore composition and production in ways that feel culturally and personally relevant.

This approach resonates with my own experiences as a culturally and linguistically diverse composer. Making music that does not conform to the dominant models of artistic legitimacy is familiar to me. What I have come to understand is that the boundaries of legitimacy are not absolute. They are constructed through curriculum choices, institutional habits, and unspoken norms.

This project represents one small intervention in that system.

Working alongside Michelle, whose research into listening, musical authority, and educational discourse (Stead, 2016) has informed the critical direction of this work, has allowed us to build a model that is both musically rigorous and politically engaged. This is not simply a project in DAW-based instruction. It is a curriculum design informed by equity, cultural responsiveness, and a commitment to challenging default pedagogical settings.

As a teacher and composer, I am not motivated by neutrality. I am motivated by the desire to build educational spaces where students encounter creative practices that reflect their identities, and where their musical knowledge is treated as valid. Music education must do more than prepare students to succeed on terms set by others. It must also equip them to define their own terms, and to do so with confidence, clarity, and creativity.