Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

Creative Commons’s decision to sell CC mixter (an online remix community) might be cause for alarm, though it could also lead to a new and improved version of the site. The concept behind CC Mixter and resources it offers have important implications for music education. It provides both a space and means for legal remixing […]

For a while now I’ve been keeping track of Web-based listening/music discovery/remixing etc. applications that I believe have positive implications for and uses in music classrooms. I alluded to some possible uses in a presentation I gave at the New Directions in General Music Conference at MSU earlier this year.
Today the Listening Post featured […]

Prior to being a full time student, when I was teaching in a public school, I remember being very frustrated with my lack of access to various music research journals. There was no way I could afford subscriptions to the wide variety of journals I now read and downloading one article could cost up to […]

While watching Super Bowl XLII I was thinking about the role music played during commercials and the game. While it was interesting to think about the particular choices of music during commercials, I got the biggest kick from the “Mr. Oboe” commercial featuring Ephraim Salaam and Chester Pitts who, according to the commercial […]

I’ve been closely following recent dialogue over the legality of transferring music from a legally purchased CD to a computer. The web has been abuzz since Marc Fisher wrote in a recent article that the RIAA considers the practice of transferring music from a legally purchased CD, illegal. This information quickly spread around the […]

Thanks to Jeff Chang for pointing out a recent article in the New York Times that discusses David Henry Hwang’s new musical “Yellow Face.” His new play addresses some of the issues of race, ethnicity and stereotypes that he also dealt with in his musical M. Butterfly in response to Miss Saigon.
This reminded me of […]

I mentioned the Sept. 25th hearing on degrading stereotypes of women in media a couple of days ago in a post regarding the discussion of rap and misogyny. The House Subcommittee hearing titled “From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images” provides some interesting material to raise in music classrooms for students’ […]

Have you ever played a turntable? You can now via the web! That’s right, every time this website is loaded from September 21st through November 25th TurntablePC, an interactive art project, will be triggered to manipulate an LP via the web in an art museum in Denmark. TurntablistPC was developed by Mogens Jacobsen.
Every since I […]

I’m looking forward to attending the Society of Music Teacher Education symposium later this week. A look through the program shows that it is going to be full of interesting papers and presentations.
Janet Barret and I will be presenting our position paper “Counterpoint or Remix? A Dialogue on Popular Music and Popular Culture in the […]

One reason why many music educators are hesitant to integrate rap music in the classroom or even discuss it, is the misogyny present through much of the commercial rap music and videos that the general public and many students are familiar with. The difficulty in navigating through the complexity of this and other […]