Ohio Music Education Association
National Association for Music Education
The Ohio Music Education Association (OMEA) is the Ohio state-level affiliate of MENC: The National Association for Music Education. Of the 52 federated state affiliates of MENC, the OMEA is the third largest and is one of only two state-level affiliate chartered as a "music education association" rather than a "music educators association."
The OMEA was founded in 1924 in as the Ohio School Band Association (OSBA) by fourteen band directors "to promote high school band contests" in Ohio. In 1929, the OSBA changed its name to the Ohio School Band and Orchestra Association (OSBOA) to reflect its newly expanded emphasis including school orchestras. In 1932, all aspects of music education were brought in, forming the OMEA. One of the oldest music education associations in the United States, the OMEA recently celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007.
The OMEA is involved at all levels of music education in Ohio, serving more than 1.8 million public school students from 612 school districts and 51 colleges and universities. The OMEA continually sponsors both regional and statewide contests.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ohio Music Education Association” as national Association for Music Education. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as national Association for Music Education. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7080857. VIAF identifies the subject as 140736973. The Library of Congress control number is n82024272. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1929, 1932 and 2007.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ohio Music Education Association”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ohio Music Education Association primary sources, Ohio Music Education Association archive and Ohio research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ohio Music Education Association”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ohio Music Education Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.