Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

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 $40! (If you don’t believe me try checking it out yourself!)

While those of us at universities have almost unlimited access to countless online journals, the majority of educators do not. It is somewhat frustrating thinking about all of the great articles that may never get read by people who can’t afford subscriptions or do not have institutional access.

One solution to expanding access to research and scholarly work is the use of open access journals. While the use of open access journals is a contentious and complex issue, it is increasingly getting discussed in public.

This week Harvard faculty are voting on a measure to determine if they should publish their work open access. You can read Robert Darnton’s case for open access online. Some scholars such as Dana Boyd have even called for tenured faculty to boycott locked down academic journals and publish in open access journals instead.

Have you ever wanted to read an article but not had access? Would you read more literature if it were available for free online in open access journals? Should more music education journals be open access?

It will be interesting to see how the academic landscape continues to shift in terms of publishing scholarly work due to digital technology. In the meantime, the debate over whether or not to publish work in open access journals and what role they might play in music education might be a healthy discussion to engage in.

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 plays (or played) the oboe. While some might be upset that the narrative of the commercial could be read as saying that playing football is a more worthy dream than playing the oboe, I started wondering how many people might now know what an oboe sounds like and that it is a member of the woodwind family! Will students be asking to switch their instruments or sign up for the oboe in schools across America?! Will Chester Pitts be giving guest oboe recitals? Will there be a trend of finding out who else in major league athletics has played an instrument at some point in their lives? On the other hand, perhaps we’ll start hearing about professional musicians who gave up sports to pursue music! Since many students watch the Super Bowl it might be interesting to ask them if any music stuck out in their minds or what they thought of the “Mr. Oboe” commercial.

The NFL website has a copy of the commercial and the Houston Texans site has the behind the scenes making of it. At the end of the clip you can watch Pitts play a little.

Jonathan Savage has been writing an interesting series of posts on the cross curricular dimensions of the UK National curriculum. If you are interested in the design of curricula, or are curious about the types of things taking place in education in the UK, his posts offer a helpful look at how cross curricular initiatives can be approached in music education. So far he has addressed the following cross curricular dimensions: Identity and Cultural Diversity, Healthy Lifestyle, and Community Participation. It might be an interesting exercise to have discussions in our own music departments regarding connections we might make with these various areas. I remember having a conversation with colleagues once about a district wide initiative for all teachers to contribute to students’ “character development.” This was a couple of years after “writing across the curriculum” was initiated. Have you ever been asked how your music department can address a “cross curricular initiative” in your own school district? How would you approach the cross curricular dimensions in the UK national curriculum?

If you are interested in issues of social justice and music education consider attending the upcoming Musica Ficta Lived Realities: A Conference on Exclusions and Engagements in Music, Education and the Arts, at the Univesity of Toronto from Thurs. Jan. 24 - Sun. Jan. 27 2008. It looks like an excellent set of sessions and workshops with some far reaching implications for the field. I’ll be presenting a paper entitled “Flippin’ the misogynist script: Representation and agency of women in Hip-Hop - Implications for music education.” I’ll post some resources and information about the paper after the conference.

Here’s a description of the conference:

Scholars, researchers, educators, artists, and activists interested in issues of social justice related to the arts and arts education are invited to attend musica ficta / Lived Realities: A Conference on Exclusions and Engagements in Music, Education and the Arts. Organized around the themes of complicity, complacency, and complexity, the primary goal of the musica ficta conference is to radicalize the notion of social justice as it currently circulates in music, education, and the arts. Participants will examine ways in which the profession is implicated in various types of inequities, injustices, and oppressions while exploring appropriate and viable responses through presentation/seminars and workshop/demonstrations. Focusing on connections between and amongst arts educators, students, researchers, artist-educators, and activists, the conference attempts to demonstrate communication and community-in-transit. Its format is multi-dimensional, with featured speakers, small interactive presentation seminars, workshop demonstrations, performances, and visits to schools and community organizations.

Selected featured speakers include:
Deborah Wong, University of California-Riverside
Rinaldo Walcott, Canada Research Chair, Social Justice and Cultural Studies (OISE)
Rick Surpin, Independence Care System, New York, NY
Sherene Razack, Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies, Sociology and Equity (OISE)
Estelle Jorgensen, Indiana University
Sara Gould, Ms. Foundation for Women and Children, New York, NY

It might be freezing outside but you can still consider having your students enroll in:

New York University’s Summer Institute of Music Technology for High School students July 14-25th, 2008.

This two-week workshop is designed for high school students entering their junior or senior year who wish to learn about and experience music technology. Through class lectures, labs and individualized studio time, students will learn the fundamentals of music technology.
The workshop will cover the following topics:
. How to build your own studio
. Signal representation and synthesis
. MIDI and sequencing
. Fundamentals of sound recording in analog and digital, single and multi-track
. Editing, mixing and post-production
. Students will use state-of-the-art equipment in NYU’s Music Technology studios, working with ProTools and Reason to develop their individualized projects

Additionally, there will be guest speakers from the industry, and students will participate in a tour of a professional recording and post-production studio, and get a tour of Carnegie Hall and its recording facility.

Application deadline is March 15th

Additional information about the program

or contact: roginska”at”nyu.edu

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 web. Recently an engadget article pointed out that the RIAA legal brief was targeting the sharing of the ripped files as the illegal act and that the music copied onto the computer were considered “unauthorized copies”.

Thanks to an article by Greg Sandoval at CNET I just came across a recent discussion on NPR between Marc Fisher, the Washington Post columnist who wrote the original story and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

As Sandoval points out the RIAA is contesting the notion that they are declaring transferring music from legally purchased CDs to a computer, illegal. They are instead focusing on the sharing of “unauthorized copies.” The RIAA however does not take the next step to declare that copying legally purchased music from CD to computer is indeed legal. Instead Sherman, according to Sandoval, who wrote:

He [Sherman] stopped short of that, saying that copyright law is too complex to make such sweeping statements. He did state that there is one full-proof way of discovering the RIAA’s policy on personal use: check the record.

Both Sandoval’s article and the actual discussion on NPR are helpful in temporarily clarifying the legality of Fair Use processes such as ripping legally purchased music from a cd to ones computer. This process is extremely important in the daily work of music educators.

Many of these and related articles demonstrate just how complex this area of copyright is. The issue of “authorized” vs. “unauthorized” copies is an equally confusing concept which might be added to the list of issues that we can/should discuss in our music classrooms. The comments left throughout the articles and blog posts and the blog posts in response to the news are equally compelling to read as they shed light on various perspectives pertaining to issues of copyright. Alexander Wolfe, from the Information Week, shifts the discussion to propose propose reducing the length of copyright ownership for the RIAA. Other sites such as techdirt and p2pnet add information and perspectives to the ongoing dialogue.

The issues are sure to develop and become even more complex in the future. How are you addressing copyright and its presence in media news in your classroom?

UPDATE 1/ 9/08 - Yet another update featuring an analysis of the RIAA’s position that ripping music from CDs to mp3 format is not legal and is unauthorized.

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your students to practice their instruments over winter break, why not have them watch these videos of Igor Falecki, a five year old percussionist and Isaiah Chevrier a 5 year old Djembe player.

Of course there are many other examples of children who perform very well on their instruments whether on sites such as youtube or on programs such as From The Top . Listening to and watching other children perform, just may inspire your students to take their skills and knowledge of their instrument to the next level.

Perhaps a student or two might even come back inspiring her or his peers in your ensemble.

I always enjoyed having my students create ringtones and discuss the musical ideas they came up with and decisions they made. One of the aspects of the process I focused on was how to compose music for such a short amount of time. Robert Voisey wrote about this topic in an interesting article at New Music Box in 2004 asking, “How short can a composition get?” He mentions composers ranging from Chopin to John Zorn.

For those of you who have your music students create original ringtones or have thought about the possibility, cellware is a web application and website that allows one to upload an mp3 file and transform it into a ringtone for free. I haven’t tried it out yet but you might want to.

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 Julia Eklund Koza’s chapter Unhappy Happy Endings: Cultural Politics in the Broadway Musical Hit Once on This Island (1997; revised 2001) in her book stepping across: four interdisciplinary studies of education and cultural politics. In the chapter, Koza discusses and problematizes the ways in which the musical “Once on This Island” constructs and represents gender and race. She also advocates that teachers engage in cultural critique and encourage their students to do the same.

That being said, it would be interesting to know how students make meaning and sense out of performing Once on This Island or any other musical for that matter. Earlier this year, the After the Storm Foundation helped students from New Orleans stage their own production of Once on this Island. It would be wonderful to learn from these students what the process of putting together the musical and its content meant for them.

With a large number of Broadway musicals being performed in schools across the country that have the potential to present steretoyped roles, and problematic constructions of gender, race and other identities - it might be interesting to consider how these issues could be addressed by music teachers and students. As students are practicing their roles, and their singing how often are we, as music teachers, finding out how they are making meaning from their work with the musical? How would engaging in a cultural critique of the musical play a role in their process and the final product?

With Hwang’s musicals and recent play in mind, perhaps one route is by having students create their own musical responses to original Broadway shows. In doing this they would not only be creating original music and gaining deep involvement with the process and products of putting on a musical but also negotiating the issues that are many times glossed over during the typical musical production.

Has anyone encountered this type of original response to musical theater before?

At the New Directions in General Music Conference in October, Bennett Reimer spoke about how according to a recent report, improvisation is one of the least addressed national standards throughout music education. Luckily for our field The International Society for Improvised Music is an organization that can help music educators develop a wide variety of approaches towards improvisation.

The 2nd Annual ISIM conference will be taking place at Northwestern University from Dec. 14th -16th. Below is the official press release: You can find more information on registration, the schedule and housing at http://isimprov.org. It is sure to be a fantastic conference. Please pass the information around to your colleagues. Hope to see you there!

International Society for Improvised Music Second Annual Conference
Building Bridges: Improvisation as a Unifying Agent in Education, Arts, and Society Ed Sarath, President

Northwestern University School of Music, Evanston, Illinois USA

December 14-16, 2007

Building Bridges: Improvisation as a Unifying Agent in Education, Arts, and Society, is a three day interdisciplinary conference that will bring together performers, educators, researchers, students and community members from across the world, furthering their understanding of improvisation in its many facets. This second annual conference of the International Society of Improvised Music is the perfect opportunity to learn about and experience current thinking in musical improvisation.

Featured Artists and Presenters include: Jane Ira Bloom and Mark Dresser, Mazen Kerbaj and Michael Zerang, Oliver Lake with the University of Michigan Creative Arts Orchestra, Bennett Reimer, and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

Creating connections is one of the most prominent themes in today’s world. Whether forging treaties between hostile nations, creating ties between diverse cultures in today’s global society, melding ideas and artistic influences, or negotiating the intricacies of human relationship; the capacity to integrate disparate perspectives and constituencies into a coherent whole—to build bridges—is central to meaning and progress in most every area of life.

Recognizing improvisation as a powerful tool for achieving this integration, the International Society for Improvised Music will feature performances, workshops, and papers based on this theme for its second international conference.

The International Society for Improvised Music promotes performance, education, and research in improvised music, and illuminates connections between musical improvisation and creativity across fields. For more information and to register for the conference visit: www.isimprov.org

Contact: Sarah Weaver, ISIM Conference Director

sarah@isimprov.org 734-277-2690