Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

When I worked on a “Copyrights and Wrongs” project with my 7th grade general music students several years ago, one of the various issues we focused on was how they would choose to treat their own music in terms of rights management. We discussed various positions and potential pros and cons of copyrighting or applying creative commons licenses to their music. Ultimately they had to make their own final decisions of what they might do to their own music. The concepts and decisions, however, were fairly abstract in relation to their own lives and experiences.

If we were having the same discussion today, I wonder how they might react to the contest being hosted by the record label Asthmatic Kitty in which contestants choose to trade the rights of their own original composition for the rights of a song being created by Sufjan Stevens.

The contract for the contest states:

We will choose one winner for the Contest based on the creativity and originality of the submitted works. We will announce the winner on or around December 15, 2007. If you win this Contest, you agree to transfer to Sponsor all rights in your submitted recording and composition. In exchange, we will transfer to you all rights in an original Sufjan Stevens recording and composition. This prize may not be transferred, substituted or redeemed for cash, except that, at our sole discretion, we may substitute a prize of comparable or greater value. (emphasis added)

It is also interesting to note the last sentence in this quoted excerpt, which makes it seem that the person receiving the rights of Sufjan Stevens’ song may not make a profit from it while the Asthmatic Kitty label could very well make a profit from the contestants’ song ,which according to the contract actually wouldn’t be the contestant’s song once it was submitted. The contract does state that you transfer your rights “if you win this contest” so presumably a person who does not win the contest would retain the rights to her or his song.

The contest and decisions that must be made to enter, raise serious issues about copyright and ownership (just to name two) that could lead to some very interesting discussions with students. Of course one must be 18 or older to legally enter the contest but it still might be interesting to ask your students what they might do.

I apologize for the lack of posting in over a month. October was a busy month and November is starting off the same! October was also a month of wonderful conferences. I still have a smile on my face from the New Horizons Band performance at the CIC conference which took place at the start of the month. Various ways of thinking about music education beyond schools and considering musical practices in our communities were discussed.

The CARMU conference on Music Learning and Teaching, hosted by Oakland University raised many important issues for our field to consider. Topics ranged from ways in which to consider the process of revision in students’ composing processes, to a very moving session detailing how public school instrumental students gave instrumental lessons to children their age at a homeless shelter. The focus on music learning and teaching with a particular focus on student centered learning was refreshing. Keep your eyes out for a forthcoming journal from CARMU that will include some of the papers. Lucy Green gave a thought provoking keynote presentation on informal learning and the music classroom. If you haven’t come across her work before, definitely take a look at the Musical Futures Project taking place in the UK. Also consider taking a look at her forthcoming book Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy when it becomes available. Another exciting aspect of the music learning and teaching conference was the fact that dialogue was built into the conference schedule. After every three or so papers the attendees would form a circle and discuss issues that arose during the previous presentations. The discussions that took place were very insightful and a powerful part of the conference experience.

The New Directions In Music Education Conference on Teaching Elementary & Secondary General Music hosted by Michigan State University was also thought provoking and surely left attendees feeling positive about the potential for general music to provide meaningful opportunities for our students. Topics ranged from various approaches towards student composition to metaphorical ways of thinking about curricular change in relation to general music. Bennett Reimer’s keynote presentation on the importance of a new direction for general music had major implications for our field. A concert featuring original music created and performed by MSU students from John Kratus’ songwriting class was a particular treat. It was obvious that the experiences they had in the class and with songwriting were very meaningful in their lives. I’ll be posting resources related to the paper I presented, “You Can’t Drop a Needle on an Ipod: Rethinking Listening in the Web 2.0 Era” by Monday Oct. 12th.

One of the highlights of both conferences besides the excellent presentations and conversations which took, place was the combination of practicing teachers, university students and university professors attending. I highly recommend attending both conferences in the future!

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’ to discuss. While the transcript of the hearing is not available yet, copies of prepared testimony, video and audio recordings of the hearing are available. Obviously just as with any other material, decisions must be made as to what should or should not be used in the classroom but a well crafted lesson could weave these various perspectives with those of our students to help them engage in more nuanced discussion of this ongoing dialogue in popular culture.

For other perspectives from the hip hop community regarding the hearing take a look at  the following sites:

Jeff Chang’s response  on his blog Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Davey D’s response 

Today is the last day you can make comments regarding MENC’s Strategic Plan. You can contribute comments via email or on a dedicated bulletin board. As of this post only about 20 people have contributed comments on the bulletin board. The comments range in topic from debate over whether or not there should be high stakes testing in music, to issues of diversity, issues of music teacher certification and issues of partnerships with for profit companies.

Do you have an insight into how assessment should play a role in music education?

Do you have an opinion about the promotion of products and organizations through partnerships with for profit companies?

Do you wonder about the direction our national organization for music education is headed over the next decade?

If so, take a look at the strategic plan, speak with your colleagues and contribute comments.

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 ordered a pair of Technic 1200 turntables and a mixer (under the district instrumental budget) for the general music program I used to teach, I’ve been interested in various ways turntables can be used in the music classroom. While it may still take some time for the majority of music educators to consider turntables musical instruments we’re probably at a point where you could purchase them through your budget if you desired. At the end of this past school year, during a visit to the school at which I used to teach, one of my former general music students excitedly told me that his parents had purchased him one of the newer models of CD “turntables” and that he practices his “scratching” and DJ skills all the time. His final project for the class had been an improvised scratch performance over a track he had created in FLstudio.

I still think potential exists for hybrid school music programs and perhaps a collaboration between student turntablists and the more traditional school ensembles. After all, now there is not only a concerto for turntable and orchestra (I was present at the premiere performance in Carnegie Hall back in 2005) but a concerto for turntables and orchestra.Why not have a group of students work collaboratively on their own original turntable and acoustic instrument composition or maybe commission a piece for your school.

Concerto for Turntable & Orchestra

Concerto for Turntables & Orchestra

Confused about the difference between a turntablist and a DJ? The movie Scratch can help you become more familiar with this particular hip hop subculture. Be warned that while there are some great excerpts that can be shown in secondary music classes, much of the material is not appropriate for school. You can also start working on your own cueing, scratching and crossfader skills with some of the free online lessons offered by the Berkley School of Music.

Perhaps this year during “lessons” there will be new sounds coming from the music department…

(youtube video clip from a hip hop academy showcase)

I had a fabulous time at the 2007 SMTE Symposium this past weekend. Congratulations to everyone at University of North Carolina at Greensboro that organized and ran the symposium so smoothly. It was great seeing people I’ve met at previous conferences and meeting new colleagues as well. The conference was packed with important presentations and I learned much from the research, best practices and position papers. I also had a lot of fun giving my presentation with Janet Barrett. I’ve posted resources on the SMTE 2007 section of the presentations page.

One exciting aspect of the SMTE symposium was the role that ASPAs play both throughout the weekend and during the year. The twelve ASPAs (Areas of Strategic Planning and Action) are organized around specific themes and issues in higher education. It is not by chance that they are considered special action groups rather than special interest groups. While the members of ASPAS are certainly interested in the particular focus of the group it is the planning and action that make them such an important and unique part of SMTE. Each ASPA was given at least 45 minutes built into the schedule on Friday to discuss important issues and then 2 hours on Friday to come up with two specific goals to be accomplished by the next ASPA meeting which will take place during a pre-conference at MENC National in April of 2008. The inclusion of ASPAS in conferences would be an excellent addition to other music education conferences.

Each session I attended gave much food for thought; from wanting to know more about what graduates of music education degree programs make of their degree once they leave the university to expanding the way we think about music education methodologies in to fully encompass teaching and learning and considering Schwab’s four commonplaces in relation to methods classes. If you weren’t at this year’s symposium and have an interest in music teacher education, I highly recommend going to the next one two years from now.

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 Music Teacher Education Curriculum.” Here’s the abstract:

“Music education has professed the importance of including popular music in the curriculum for decades. Well-articulated rationales for popular music in the curriculum provide compelling arguments for its relevance to students’ lives and its eclectic representation of diverse musical practices. In this presentation, we will adopt a dialogic approach to problematize the disparity between generalized support for popular music and its scarcity in music teacher education. As a music teacher educator of several decades who feels admittedly distanced from popular music, and as a doctoral student who has worked closely with middle school students to understand how deeply they are engaged in popular music, we will explore the tensions, biases, and conflicting values that perpetuate this gap. The dialogue will address the institutional, programmatic, and ideological impediments that need to be confronted in order to prepare teachers for teaching popular musics in informed and relevant ways, and the challenges of shifting from a discourse of popular music as a product to one that addresses the ways that students engage in popular music. We aim to move beyond the rhetoric concerned with the place of popular music in the curriculum toward a discourse and praxis of popular culture.”

I’m hoping to report back from the symposium sometime next week. Look for a new “presentations” page on this blog that will have a list of references and resources related to the SMTE presentation.

If you haven’t had a chance to read some of the excellent articles in our professional journals regarding popular music it’s worth your time to catch up on some of the thinking that has gone beyond the “we should/shouldn’t include it” dialogue which has been going on in our field for around 80 years! At the very least take a look at the article “Popular music in the school: Remixing the issues” Music Educators Journal, 93(4), 32-27.

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 issues leads to many music educators avoiding the topic all together.

On September 25th of 2007 Congress will be holding a hearing focusing on media and

“”stereotypes and degradation” of women — particularly African- American women”

It is important to point out that the hearing is not focusing excluslively on rap music but the larger media culture and industry it fits in.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection was quoted in Variety Magazine as saying:

“I want to engage not just the music industry but the entertainment industry at large to be part of a solution,”

Many rap artists and critics make the point that the music industry plays a large role in the continuation of misogynist language in the music they promote and sell. A recent commercial by Hardees making use of its own rap music for example, demonstrates how misogyny is often promoted and maintained by various corporate entities, industries and forms of commercial media which benefit financially from their use.

These conversations are in no way new. As music educators we can draw on a long trajectory of discussions that are still currently taking place within the hip hop community, in academia, cultural critiques and between our own students to allow current and future discussions to be more informed and nuanced.

In following the upcoming congressional hearing, conversations surrounding it and becoming more familiar with discussions that have already taken place, we can become better prepared to deal with these issues in our own classrooms. How might we begin to touch on these topics with our students? How can we assist our students in negotiating these issues in their own lives and with conversations with their peers?

A Very Short Collection of Resources To Become More Aware of These Discussions

WARNING: Due to the topic, some of the resources below contain language, music and/or video images that are offensive

Hip Hop Cleanup Involves more than musicians Davey D. April 2007

Music Execs Silent as Rap Debate Rages - Marcus Franklin May 2007

Misogyny & Hip Hop - Radio Schomburg Junior Scholars Radio - Youth created radio program 2006

“Beyond Beats & Rhymes” a documentary by Byron Hurt addressing issues such as misogyny in hip hop

Interview with Byron Hurt & Mark Anthony Neal NPR Talk of the Nation Feb. 20 2007

Oprah Town Hall on Hip Hop & Misogyny Excerpt From YouTube

Hip Hop’s (Still) Invisible Women Yvonne Bynoe May 2007

Sexism, Hip-Hop and Misogyny Listen to a broadcast from NPR’s Talk of the Nation on 2/5/05 addressing these issues

Misogyny in Music Rap’s bad Rap - A series of several articles on Tolerance.org 2003

Misogyny, gangsta rap, and The Piano bell hooks Z magazine Feb. 1994

Simply Slang, or a culture of disrespect? NPR Youth Radio June 18 2007 also addresses race and language issues

Hip Hop Under Fire - 3 part NPR series May 2007

Anytime I hear about a music class, whether in K-12 schools or the university level, that makes use of improvisation and composition I get excited. I was happy to read Scott Spiegelberg’s recent post “Teaching Creativity” (via his excellent “Musical Perceptions” blog). At the end of his post he asks the following question regarding students who are “scared or reluctant” about a composition project:

“So, how do you light the creative spark in these types of students?”

You can read my response in the comments section of the post but here (I include some publications in it that I don’t in this post) I want to make the point that I believe what we do in our K-12 music classrooms can play a significant role in this situation. While there is no guarantee that the integration of improvisation and composition throughout the years that a child is in public (or private) school will result in “creativity,” the more opportunities students have engaging in creative thinking, musical problem solving, and exploration through improvisation and composition, the more practice they will have in being creative musically. In addition, after years of engaging in composing and improvising it is less likely that students who do enter college music programs will be scared or reluctant to engage in these aspects of musicianship.

Luckily for music educators who do not have experience teaching improvisation and composing, more and more resources are becoming available each year. “The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning,” edited by Richard Colwell and Carol Richardson, has two chapters devoted to research in improvisation. The article “Improvisation Begins With Exploration” by Micah Volz in the Music Educators Journal, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Sep., 2005), pp. 50-53 is a great practical starting place for approaching improvising with your students. “Why and how to teach music composition: A new horizon for music education,” edited by Maud Hickey, offers excellent starting points for thinking about teaching composition and”Composition in the Classroom: A Tool for Teaching” by Jackie Wiggins is also a great practical guide for teachers who want composing to be a part of their classes. It is worth the time to peruse through issues of the Music Educators Journal and to look for related articles in our other professional journals for the latest thinking on improvising and composing in the music classroom.

Engaging in these forms of musicianship ourselves is also a very important aspect of having them be a part of our music classrooms. Why not ask some of your colleagues to stick around one day after school for a jam session or compose a piece for your students or a future faculty recital? Have you ever improvised with your students?

The question that Spiegelberg raises is an important one for the music education community.

What role do we as music educators play, regardless of the specific classes/ensembles we teach, in providing students with opportunities to improvise and compose? How do you “light the creative spark” in your students? How are our classrooms conducive to allowing those who already have sparks and more realize their own creative potential?

Listening is probably one of the most important concepts that our students can learn and engage in. When asking our students to listen, whether to music, sound or each other, do we ask them to listen deeply? This is exactly what composer and performer Pauline Oliveros asks of us. Oliveros has spent years developing her concept of Deep Listening and even has an organization that teaches people how to practice it. Recently her Worldwide Tuning Meditation was performed and listened to in an attempt to connect people across the world. It’s worth taking a look at the score which is available for free on her website.

Sound explorations and sonic meditations are very interesting techniques in helping our students listen in ways in which they might be unfamiliar. At the 2006 International Society for Improvised Music conference Pauline Oliveros led the entire group of attendees in a sonic meditation. I remember feeling amazing afterward and thinking that it would make an excellent transition for students after coming in from the hustle and bustle in the hallway to our music classrooms. Besides encouraging them to listen to each other it might help them gain a sense of their own voice and how it fits within the collective voice of their class.

Besides Oliveros, composers such as R. Murray Schafer encourage us to open our ears, listen and explore sound in new ways. Practicing some of the suggestions in Schafer’s books such as “The Thinking Ear” and “A Sound Education” can lead to a profound change in the way our students and we might approach listening, thinking about and engaging in music.

Consider trying out a sonic meditation and some of Schafer’s suggestions in your music classes this year.