Essence of Joy: Empathy in an Afrocentric Collegiate Choral Ensemble at a Predominately White Institution

Abstract
Researchers (e.g., Watts & Piña, 2023) have demonstrated that World Music Pedagogy might promote students’ empathy towards members of other cultures. In choral ensembles, however, researchers have yet to study whether or how transcultural musicking, or engaging with music and/or musicians from cultures other than one’s own (Sánchez-Gatt et al., 2025, pp. 56–57), promotes experiences of empathy. The purpose of this phenomenological study (Moustakas, 1994) was to explore the oft repeated claim in World Music Pedagogy that transcultural musicking supports students’ experiences of empathy by examining the experiences of participants in Essence of Joy, an Afrocentric choir at The Pennsylvania State University, a Predominately White Institution (i.e., a post-secondary institution in the U.S. with a majority of white students). Additional goals of this research were to examine how participants’ experiences of empathy were mediated by whether they belonged to the cultural or racial group whose music was performed by the ensemble and to examine in what ways experiences of empathy were supported by the choir’s repertoire, the conductor’s pedagogical choices, or both. Data included eight semi-structured interviews, field notes, and participant-observation. I identified three textural themes, “connections to others,” “connections to self,” and “multifaceted definitions of empathy.” I also developed a structural analysis represented in a graphic model of the participants’ experiences and synthesized the textural themes and structural analysis into a phenomenological essence statement. The essence of participants’ experiences of empathy in Essence of Joy was transformational connections to others and to themselves. For Black participants, singing in Essence of Joy also provided an opportunity to explore their ethnic identity. Based on the findings, I suggest implications for practice and future research.