Across questions of appropriate repertoire, pedagogies, teacher training, and educational philosophies, cultural diversity in music education has sparked lively debates for over five decades. This article tries to connect a number of the key issues in this area. Drawing on autoethnography and historical research, with a goal to clarify a number of conceptual issues, it summarises ideas presented by the author during two lectures on the topic at Sibelius Academy in 2009. The paper refers back to a 2007 article on the occasion of the opening of the World Music & Dance Centre in Rotterdam, and proceeds to present a model based on Schippers' 2010 monograph Facing the music: Shaping music education from a global perspective (Oxford University Press).