One of the biggest things that has stuck with me a week after finishing this Shakespeare course is the teacher repeatedly making the point that we must "land" our lines on the listeners. That it's not enough to know them and say them, even with great interpretive emotion, but that if you don't connect with the listener, you might as well be reciting Shakespeare in your car (no, I never do this...well, hardly ever...). Raise the stakes. Feel the importance of the words, implore the listener to hear you, understand you, go along with you. This is the lesson I am carrying around with me as a music teacher of children who, more often than not, would rather listen to each other than me. It's not that they don't like me. It's just that the things going on in their social world are far more important to them than anything I might want to say to them. Hisa, our teacher, reminded us again and again to "check in; are they getting it?" With her eyes and her gestures and a lovable habit of saying "do you know what I mean?" or "does that make sense?" after her explanations, she pushed us to look for our audience's eyes and signs of understanding.
It seems obvious that a teacher in a roomful of students should be striving to get them to understand and "get" what she is saying. But I know myself. I know that there have been times when I have wondered whether anyone cares enough to get it, or that maybe that what I am trying to get to them is maybe not important enough. It is at these times that I have underlying, unspoken doubts about what I am doing: Does music really matter? Does it really matter if the kids actually play a song? Or is it enough for them just to think they are playing a song, pushing a bow back and forth on open strings, or blowing random notes into a horn? The obvious answer to these questions is "of course those things matter!" But when it seems that said roomful of kids would rather talk to each other, or make random noise on their instruments, or daydream, then I do wonder why I bother. And I also wonder if this feeling is unique to me, or is something that other teachers, and music teachers in particular, share.
I find myself imagining that if I could just say the right things, I would have every kid playing like a virtuoso, motivated to practice that elusive 30 minutes a day, and showing up to my classes because they dare not miss one word of those important, and ever-entertaining mots falling from my golden lips. I imagine that other teachers, my colleagues, all have found the right things to say and their classes are full of eager, silently-listening, paying-attention musical geniuses.
Since starting the Shakespeare class, I have been studying in my working life how to be sure the kids are getting what I am saying. I have spoken Shakespeare's lines in my acting class, and felt the weight of their importance. I know the stakes. I must believe that words I speak to my students are just as important. The stakes are just as high. Maybe most important, I must find "the impulse to speak" that Hisa had us look for before we uttered one word. As teachers, we ASSUME an impulse to speak, a RIGHT to speak, but if we are honest, we would probably admit that we speak more than we should. I know I do. If I want to "land" my words on my students' understanding, to impart something valuable to them, then I must keep the words' value high, by making them rare. Kids learn by doing. I should only be giving them enough words to be sure they can DO. The end.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
March
Rainy Sunday, spring teasing us, one music festival over and another one- and spring break- two weeks away, we are in the rolling along part of the year, where we can actually get into a rhythm of weekly classes, going more or less regularly along. After the music festival in February, kids have been coming back to class out of the woodwork, reassured by me that we are done with that really hard music for awhile, and can get back to building their fundamentals and playing easier songs.
I like this time of year, though Spring Break always comes not a minute too soon. There is a steadiness to the schedule, and we get to dig in and learn things like slurs on the strings and "going over the break" in clarinets. The beginning students are beginning to build a little repertoire so they can play something at their spring concert.
But it is also at this time that some kids are coming to me, instrument in hand, saying they are here to turn it in. These are usually beginners who, from the first, had trouble remembering to come to class. They had an idea that playing an instrument would be fun; that first rush of coming to music class, being assigned an instrument of their very own, and those first couple of lessons where it was all so exciting passed, and they realized that they actually would be required to put forth some effort. For some, the challenge of keeping up with classwork that they miss for the time they're are in music class is too much, or at least that's what they say.
So here is where my thinking goes kind of haywire. I have read, many times, figures that suggest that students who study music throughout school do better in school. They get better grades, score higher on standardized testing and are more likely to go to college. This idea seems to be pretty universally accepted. But this point, right here, where children begin to self-select their ongoing committment to music, is where we need to look to determine chicken/egg first-ness.
We teachers of the Arts in general and Music in particular use these facts to advocate for our programs. But what are we really saying? I am haunted by the student who a) keeps forgetting to bring his instrument, b) struggles to get any meaningful sounds out of that instrument when he does come with it to class c) has no clue how to practice at home and d) falls behind in his regular classwork as a result of the 45 minutes a week he is in music class. The way our music classes are structured now, a certain percentage of our initial number of students will fall into this category, and any statistics we might like to cite to prove the value of MUSIC IN SCHOOL are necessarily skewed by this inevitability.
I have been attempting to look at standardized test scores over time in regards to our own ongoing students in Pasadena Unified. I have not found any conclusive evidence that the little bit of music we are able to do with elementary students has any effect at all. Maybe as we follow these same students through high school, we will find significant differences between those who stick with music, and those who don't. But here's the thing: Those students who stick with music all the way through high school usually had little doubt from the beginning that they would do so. That's the kind of student they are. They do well in school because that's the kind of student they are.
There is another category of students for whom music is so important that, even if they struggle to keep up with school work, they continue music. They may not be the A+ students in any academic sense, but they show up and do the work. They may not be the best musician in the class, but maybe music in their school is what they show up FOR. These kids may get through school, barely, but get through they do. I met a former student who was in this category a couple years ago working as an aide at one of my elementary schools. She had been a really tough, at-risk 6th grader when I first knew her, but she played clarinet, I might say, fiercely, and it was playing clarinet, by her admission as a grown-up, that got her to graduation from high school. I love these students- their passion and their resiliance. Statistically, they don't add to a school's API, but they don't add to the drop-out rate either, and that's worth something. But most important in this discussion is that music becomes a sort of life-line for them.
I am beginning to realize that it might be time for an overhaul of our whole music program. First thing I would like to do is make music class part of the schedule for EVERY student. And it doesn't have to be an instrumental music class. General music literacy is being lost, and it might be the very thing that actually affects brain development and academic achievement. If we work with whole classes, giving the classroom teacher much needed release time and removing student anxiety about missing classwork, and do this in the early grades, we will possibly affect real change. We would also create a pool of students who, by fourth or fifth grade, are more ready and able to handle the challenge of learning an orchestra or band instrument.
My long-time dream is this: General music in K-2, with focus on singing, beginning note reading, rhythm, movement, maybe some keyboard knowledge. In third and fourth grade everyone studies violin. In fifth grade everyone has a choice: either to continue with strings or start a wind instrument. If we did this, consistently and equitably I do believe there would be benefits to every child at every level, and I also think that there would be many fewer instruments turned in in March.
I like this time of year, though Spring Break always comes not a minute too soon. There is a steadiness to the schedule, and we get to dig in and learn things like slurs on the strings and "going over the break" in clarinets. The beginning students are beginning to build a little repertoire so they can play something at their spring concert.
But it is also at this time that some kids are coming to me, instrument in hand, saying they are here to turn it in. These are usually beginners who, from the first, had trouble remembering to come to class. They had an idea that playing an instrument would be fun; that first rush of coming to music class, being assigned an instrument of their very own, and those first couple of lessons where it was all so exciting passed, and they realized that they actually would be required to put forth some effort. For some, the challenge of keeping up with classwork that they miss for the time they're are in music class is too much, or at least that's what they say.
So here is where my thinking goes kind of haywire. I have read, many times, figures that suggest that students who study music throughout school do better in school. They get better grades, score higher on standardized testing and are more likely to go to college. This idea seems to be pretty universally accepted. But this point, right here, where children begin to self-select their ongoing committment to music, is where we need to look to determine chicken/egg first-ness.
We teachers of the Arts in general and Music in particular use these facts to advocate for our programs. But what are we really saying? I am haunted by the student who a) keeps forgetting to bring his instrument, b) struggles to get any meaningful sounds out of that instrument when he does come with it to class c) has no clue how to practice at home and d) falls behind in his regular classwork as a result of the 45 minutes a week he is in music class. The way our music classes are structured now, a certain percentage of our initial number of students will fall into this category, and any statistics we might like to cite to prove the value of MUSIC IN SCHOOL are necessarily skewed by this inevitability.
I have been attempting to look at standardized test scores over time in regards to our own ongoing students in Pasadena Unified. I have not found any conclusive evidence that the little bit of music we are able to do with elementary students has any effect at all. Maybe as we follow these same students through high school, we will find significant differences between those who stick with music, and those who don't. But here's the thing: Those students who stick with music all the way through high school usually had little doubt from the beginning that they would do so. That's the kind of student they are. They do well in school because that's the kind of student they are.
There is another category of students for whom music is so important that, even if they struggle to keep up with school work, they continue music. They may not be the A+ students in any academic sense, but they show up and do the work. They may not be the best musician in the class, but maybe music in their school is what they show up FOR. These kids may get through school, barely, but get through they do. I met a former student who was in this category a couple years ago working as an aide at one of my elementary schools. She had been a really tough, at-risk 6th grader when I first knew her, but she played clarinet, I might say, fiercely, and it was playing clarinet, by her admission as a grown-up, that got her to graduation from high school. I love these students- their passion and their resiliance. Statistically, they don't add to a school's API, but they don't add to the drop-out rate either, and that's worth something. But most important in this discussion is that music becomes a sort of life-line for them.
I am beginning to realize that it might be time for an overhaul of our whole music program. First thing I would like to do is make music class part of the schedule for EVERY student. And it doesn't have to be an instrumental music class. General music literacy is being lost, and it might be the very thing that actually affects brain development and academic achievement. If we work with whole classes, giving the classroom teacher much needed release time and removing student anxiety about missing classwork, and do this in the early grades, we will possibly affect real change. We would also create a pool of students who, by fourth or fifth grade, are more ready and able to handle the challenge of learning an orchestra or band instrument.
My long-time dream is this: General music in K-2, with focus on singing, beginning note reading, rhythm, movement, maybe some keyboard knowledge. In third and fourth grade everyone studies violin. In fifth grade everyone has a choice: either to continue with strings or start a wind instrument. If we did this, consistently and equitably I do believe there would be benefits to every child at every level, and I also think that there would be many fewer instruments turned in in March.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Music and Shakespeare
"...the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been taking acting classes. These were fun; I learned some things about myself and acting but I wanted more. So now I have bitten into another class called "Speaking Shakespeare" taught through A Noise Within, a classic repertory theater soon to move to Pasadena (yay!). We have been chewing on a speech from Hamlet for the last four weeks, and I have decided that what I have gained from this chewing is as valuable to my development as a musician/music teacher as it would ever be to some vague notion I might have of trying my hand at actual acting.
The teacher of the class, Hisa Takakuwa, is incredibly knowledgeable about everything to do with Shakespeare: historical context, common practice, deep meanings of words and phrases, the details of the work in the canon, and how to talk to actors to get them to see what she sees. I know that there are many ways to approach Shakespeare, but immersing myself in this one expert's approach empowers me to believe that what I now know about Shakespeare, and Hamlet, is based on solid scholarship.
I thought I was taking this class for recreation. I have always loved Shakespeare and thought taking this class would allow me to delve deeper into that love. It has. But something else is happening in my brain. The words of Shakespeare have begun to run through my head like music. The rhythms of the pentameters, the irregularities of those pentameters, the alliterations and onomatopoeia, have become as "worms" in my brain, filling my dreams and waking times like the catchy hooks of pop songs. Thinking about how to say these words, how to glean their meaning and deliver it and make it "land" on another actor gives me a whole new way to think about teaching and learning music.
My middle school students have undertaken to learn an adaptation of Gustav Holst's Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity as a possible piece to play at the Forum Festival in May. This piece, though an adaptation, is a real challenge for kids this age, and they are rising to the challenge, eagerly. The trumpets are pushing their ranges upwards. We are working out major choreography for the 4 percussionists so that all the parts can be covered. We have recruited a former percussionist to play tuba. He has never played a brass instrument before this year, and is taking to it in a big way. The flutes are flowing over their beautiful harmonized arpeggios like pros. (Now we just have to figure out how to HEAR them!) The violins are playing in the stratosphere of their instruments with tremolos. My formerly timid trombone player is finding the brass in his instrument. We are shaking the rafters, rattling the windows, and having a blast. And here's where Shakespeare comes in. I find myself talking to them about how to play this monster the same way Hisa talks to us about how to play Shakespeare. Getting beyond the reading of the notes-or words- and hitting the listener with meaning.
Though Jupiter is a jolly planet, he gets pretty intense, and in our adaptation, the really jolly theme is not even presented. I kind of wonder why, since it is actually very easy melodically and harmonically. What we do have, though, are the syncopated tunes in the low brass and strings which are echoed in the percussion. Not easy to teach, not easy to learn, but we persevere, and are making progress. We have talked about the army coming up over the hill to get the trumpets' bells UP so we can hear the fanfare announcing the arrival of said army...maybe it's the circus that's coming. The snare drummer has to play that figure like gunshots. Now, I'm not a fan of guns in any shape or form, and have been known to come down hard on kids for turning clarinets into pretend rifles. But with the images from Henry V in my head (my husband is also a huge Shakespeare fan and we had just watched the Kenneth Branagh version) all I could think was that those snare drum sounds needed to sound like shots. And the imagery worked for the musician. Crisp and clean, he delivered. We talked about energy in bows, about listening across the orchestra to others who have the same figure as you. We have been talking about how the audience will hear this piece. And I want to talk more about the jolly aspect...(I really miss that one theme....maybe I ought to try my hand at an addendum to the arrangement.)
It is thanks to these classes in Shakespeare that I have new vocabulary to use to impart understanding. I don't know if the kids see or hear something new in the way I talk to them, but I feel something new, and that's got to be good, right?
I think these classes should count as professional development -and therefore be tax-deductible- don't you?
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been taking acting classes. These were fun; I learned some things about myself and acting but I wanted more. So now I have bitten into another class called "Speaking Shakespeare" taught through A Noise Within, a classic repertory theater soon to move to Pasadena (yay!). We have been chewing on a speech from Hamlet for the last four weeks, and I have decided that what I have gained from this chewing is as valuable to my development as a musician/music teacher as it would ever be to some vague notion I might have of trying my hand at actual acting.
The teacher of the class, Hisa Takakuwa, is incredibly knowledgeable about everything to do with Shakespeare: historical context, common practice, deep meanings of words and phrases, the details of the work in the canon, and how to talk to actors to get them to see what she sees. I know that there are many ways to approach Shakespeare, but immersing myself in this one expert's approach empowers me to believe that what I now know about Shakespeare, and Hamlet, is based on solid scholarship.
I thought I was taking this class for recreation. I have always loved Shakespeare and thought taking this class would allow me to delve deeper into that love. It has. But something else is happening in my brain. The words of Shakespeare have begun to run through my head like music. The rhythms of the pentameters, the irregularities of those pentameters, the alliterations and onomatopoeia, have become as "worms" in my brain, filling my dreams and waking times like the catchy hooks of pop songs. Thinking about how to say these words, how to glean their meaning and deliver it and make it "land" on another actor gives me a whole new way to think about teaching and learning music.
My middle school students have undertaken to learn an adaptation of Gustav Holst's Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity as a possible piece to play at the Forum Festival in May. This piece, though an adaptation, is a real challenge for kids this age, and they are rising to the challenge, eagerly. The trumpets are pushing their ranges upwards. We are working out major choreography for the 4 percussionists so that all the parts can be covered. We have recruited a former percussionist to play tuba. He has never played a brass instrument before this year, and is taking to it in a big way. The flutes are flowing over their beautiful harmonized arpeggios like pros. (Now we just have to figure out how to HEAR them!) The violins are playing in the stratosphere of their instruments with tremolos. My formerly timid trombone player is finding the brass in his instrument. We are shaking the rafters, rattling the windows, and having a blast. And here's where Shakespeare comes in. I find myself talking to them about how to play this monster the same way Hisa talks to us about how to play Shakespeare. Getting beyond the reading of the notes-or words- and hitting the listener with meaning.
Though Jupiter is a jolly planet, he gets pretty intense, and in our adaptation, the really jolly theme is not even presented. I kind of wonder why, since it is actually very easy melodically and harmonically. What we do have, though, are the syncopated tunes in the low brass and strings which are echoed in the percussion. Not easy to teach, not easy to learn, but we persevere, and are making progress. We have talked about the army coming up over the hill to get the trumpets' bells UP so we can hear the fanfare announcing the arrival of said army...maybe it's the circus that's coming. The snare drummer has to play that figure like gunshots. Now, I'm not a fan of guns in any shape or form, and have been known to come down hard on kids for turning clarinets into pretend rifles. But with the images from Henry V in my head (my husband is also a huge Shakespeare fan and we had just watched the Kenneth Branagh version) all I could think was that those snare drum sounds needed to sound like shots. And the imagery worked for the musician. Crisp and clean, he delivered. We talked about energy in bows, about listening across the orchestra to others who have the same figure as you. We have been talking about how the audience will hear this piece. And I want to talk more about the jolly aspect...(I really miss that one theme....maybe I ought to try my hand at an addendum to the arrangement.)
It is thanks to these classes in Shakespeare that I have new vocabulary to use to impart understanding. I don't know if the kids see or hear something new in the way I talk to them, but I feel something new, and that's got to be good, right?
I think these classes should count as professional development -and therefore be tax-deductible- don't you?
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Making a Better Violinist
"I may not be able to make you into a great dancer. I may not even be able to make you a good dancer. But if you keep trying and don't quit, I can make you a better dancer".
-Joe Gideon All That Jazz
This quote struck me as we watched All That Jazz on T.V. the other night. The film version of Bob Fossey's life and times may or may not be an accurate depiction of the real man behind all the great dancing, but I believe in his desire to push the dancers as far as they could go, or as far as they want to go.
We are coming up to our annual All-District Music Festival this next week, and the preparations have gotten me thinking about how the kids in my elementary string classes have separated themselves into three distinct groups. The music for the elementary string players is especially challenging this year, as we are combining the elementary and middle schools to make one large string orchestra. My middle school string players had no trouble learning the music. The music for the elementary band (which I will be directing!) was chosen to encourage even beginning wind players to participate. So the elementary band kids have had very little difficulty learning the music. But for the elementary string players, the task of getting this music "into their fingers" has proved to be a challenge to which some have felt unequal.
I started noticing it right after we got back from Winter break. Here and there a string player wouldn't show up for class. These classes are "pull-outs", so it is up to the kids to leave their classrooms and come to the music room. We have been striving to see the 5th graders twice a week this year, so if a student missed one day, I would expect to see them the next. But they began dropping away, till there were maybe a third of the original students no longer attending regularly.
The three categories of players separating themselves are like this. First there are the students who LOVE to practice or whose parents MAKE them practice, and for whom the challenge of this music is fun. They are a small, but enthusiastic group, who are proud of their significant accomplishments. The third of the students who dropped away here are the ones for whom this challenge was just too daunting, and no matter how much we went over it in class, they didn't understand how to work on it at home, so rather than fail, they just quit coming. Then there is the third group. These are kids who have kept on coming, who keep on trying, but have not really learned the music at all. They even tell me they are practicing at home. But as I watch them pushing their bows back and forth over mostly open strings, getting a random finger down here and there, I can see very clearly that they don't know what they are doing. And they sometimes seem truly surprised that I am not going to let them go to the festival.
I feel bad for these kids, and try to make it up to them by telling them I can see that they have been working, and I appreciate the work they have done, but no one is going to help them learn their music during the festival rehearsals, and as of now, they don't know it well enough to get through the first rehearsal. "Can't I have till next Tuesday?", asked one boy desperately, yesterday, as I was hyping the class for this last practice together before the first big rehearsal. After I told him no, that today was the last day for me to decide, and he was clearly not ready, he spent the rest of the class shooting daggers at me from his eyes. I asked another student who had missed a few classes to stay after to audition, because she said she knew the music even though I could see she didn't. I thought maybe if I heard her by herself, I would be able to see that she knew enough to get through the big rehearsals. But when I sat down next to her to hear her play, she said "Well, I don't know it NOW!",-implying that any minute now, she would. The students in this group sometimes seem to be completely clueless as to what "playing the music" really means.
I have been known to say "fake it 'til you make it" to encourage struggling students to keep trying. For the first group, this mantra helps them get through the hard parts, and persevere until they can jump in and keep going on the parts they know well. They WILL make it, eventually. It seems the second group, the dropouts, DO know the difference, and recognize their own limitations, and have decided to drop rather than keep on faking. But this third group seems to think that the faking is the same as the real, and some seem surprised that I don't think so too.
I really love our District Festival. It gives us a focus to our teaching, and ALWAYS brings up the level of the playing of the kids who stick with it. Even the third group grows from working on hard music. This year, with my elementary strings, though, I feel I will need to do some real re-recruiting when it's all over. It will be time to dig out some easier music that everyone can succeed at, and get back to the fun of making music together. I want all those students who fell by the wayside to jump back in with us. We will be able to move a little slower then, hopefully keeping them all swimming and not sinking. They may not ever be great violinists, or even very good violinists, but if they will keep trying and not quit, I might be able to help them become better violinists.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Wow, and Wow.
Last Thursday we took a field trip to the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live. We at Sierra Madre Middle School had invited a group of music students from Eliot Middle School across town to join us on this worthy adventure. We had been planning this trip since about September, and we couldn't believe it was already here. (This can only mean that the rest of the school year will register as a mere blip on the radar screen of time.) 64 kids from radically diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds piled on to the bus, unified by one thing: their love of and participation in Music.
I took a group from Sierra Madre to the Grammy Museum last year, and it was such a hit, such a fun and interesting outing that I knew we had to do it again this year. About half my class had been last year, and eagerly anticipated this year's trip with questions throughout the year: Is the Michael Jackson display still there, and if not, what replaced it? What will our workshop be? Since it's "Grammy Week", will we see famous people? If we do, can we ask them for their autograph?
We chose to go during Grammy Week- that is, the week before the Grammy Awards- because we had been told last year that this is a great time at the Museum, with actual Grammy winners giving the programs. This year our workshop was to be a presentation by "a group of Grammy-Award-Winning Blues Musicians from the state of Mississippi". I figured it would be some old guys with slide guitars which would be fine with me. Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Son House, someone like that? Great.
As we filed off the bus a few minutes early we had time to wander around the plaza of L.A. Live which is also home to Staples Center where the Lakers play, Club Nokia and the towering Marriot/Ritz-Carlton hotel complex. Surrounded by light board advertisement, and with the bustling activity of preparations for Sunday's awards ceremony underway, the kids were snapping pictures and pointing things out to each other. Already a good day. (All this interesting activity didn't stop them from wanting to go into Starbucks, however which I nixxed...what IS it about teenagers and Starbucks? I think I could write a whole article about THAT!)
Finally it was time to go into the Museum. Nwaka, one of the welcoming education coordinators, whom we had met last year, and who greeted me with a hug, gave the kids a quick outline of the do's and don'ts of the museum, and then we went in. If you live in L.A., and love music, you really owe it to yourself to take a visit to this museum. There is so much to see and learn and play with, I don't really know where to start to describe it. Suffice it to say that the kids knew just how to enjoy the museum, and the museum seems to have been made just for them, though I feel it was made just for me too. Whatever your musical interests and tastes are, you will find historic artifacts, videos, recordings, interactive displays of all kinds. It is a small, richly packed museum, do-able in a Sunday afternoon.
After about an hour (which was plenty of time for a group of middle schoolers) we went into the Clive Davis Auditorium for our workshop. We were given a short introduction to a group called The Homemade Jamz Blues Band from Tupelo Mississippi, and then saw a video clip of the band's interview on the Today Show. All well, and good. But then...the band itself took the stage and we were treated to a short set of hard rocking original blues songs which had the kids screaming for more.
Who is this band? They are a family consisting of an 18 year old lead guitar player, a 16 year old bass player, and a 13 year old drummer, with dad on blues harp. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that these performers were kids. They have been playing together as a band for several years now, and have toured the world.
You can check out their web page at http://www.hmjamzbluesband.com/. They released their third CD in November.
After they played for us, they pulled up some chairs and told their story. We could tell they have told this story many times, but they were very comfortable sitting there talking to a bunch of kids not much different from them, at least age-wise. Ryan told us how, when the military family was unpacking to spend time stationed in Germany, he found the guitar his dad had bought years ago and abandoned. Ryan found a mentor in Mississppi and found his blues voice there too. Kyle told about trying to learn piano and guitar and giving up...too many notes to learn, he said. But he took to the bass because it only had four strings, and he plays it like he was born to do it. The youngest- Taya, who is 13, and a GIRL drummer- is, in fact, the same age as many of our own students. She told of being the tamborine player when she was 6 and then finding an old green drum kit left as trash at the curb and taking it home and learning it when, I think she said, she was 9. She is self-taught, but drives that band with power and impeccable time. Finally, Dad got to tell his story and his gentle, self-effacing manner told of a man bemused and delighted with the suprises his kids showed him. He joined them on blues harp only three years ago- and admitted to learning his art on youtube, but seems to have played all his life.
The boys play guitars made from car parts, mufflers, I think. This was Dad's idea, and is a catchy trademark image for a group that needs no gimmicks. Ryan told us that his guitar actually can spew colored smoke out of its "tailpipes", but that since we were indoors they were afraid they would set off the sprinklers, so they didn't use them.
One of our missions as music teachers who follow state and national standards to guide our teaching (Yes, there are such things.) is to present music to our students as a possible career, and show them ways they can make a career of their music skills and knowledge. The kids in the Homemade Jamz Blues Band sought out instruction for what they wanted to learn and have already launched a career that will carry them through their whole lives. What an inspiration!
I hope Ryan, Kyle and Taya have a long and successful career. I imagine that they will branch out, possibly play with other people along the way. They have already touched millions of lives, and I am grateful that my students are some of those. The museum was fun, and by itself a worthy outing. But meeting and hearing the Homemade Jamz Blues Band kicked our field trip into the realm of awesomeness that the kids of Sierra Madre and Eliot Middle Schools will not soon forget.
I took a group from Sierra Madre to the Grammy Museum last year, and it was such a hit, such a fun and interesting outing that I knew we had to do it again this year. About half my class had been last year, and eagerly anticipated this year's trip with questions throughout the year: Is the Michael Jackson display still there, and if not, what replaced it? What will our workshop be? Since it's "Grammy Week", will we see famous people? If we do, can we ask them for their autograph?
We chose to go during Grammy Week- that is, the week before the Grammy Awards- because we had been told last year that this is a great time at the Museum, with actual Grammy winners giving the programs. This year our workshop was to be a presentation by "a group of Grammy-Award-Winning Blues Musicians from the state of Mississippi". I figured it would be some old guys with slide guitars which would be fine with me. Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Son House, someone like that? Great.
As we filed off the bus a few minutes early we had time to wander around the plaza of L.A. Live which is also home to Staples Center where the Lakers play, Club Nokia and the towering Marriot/Ritz-Carlton hotel complex. Surrounded by light board advertisement, and with the bustling activity of preparations for Sunday's awards ceremony underway, the kids were snapping pictures and pointing things out to each other. Already a good day. (All this interesting activity didn't stop them from wanting to go into Starbucks, however which I nixxed...what IS it about teenagers and Starbucks? I think I could write a whole article about THAT!)
Finally it was time to go into the Museum. Nwaka, one of the welcoming education coordinators, whom we had met last year, and who greeted me with a hug, gave the kids a quick outline of the do's and don'ts of the museum, and then we went in. If you live in L.A., and love music, you really owe it to yourself to take a visit to this museum. There is so much to see and learn and play with, I don't really know where to start to describe it. Suffice it to say that the kids knew just how to enjoy the museum, and the museum seems to have been made just for them, though I feel it was made just for me too. Whatever your musical interests and tastes are, you will find historic artifacts, videos, recordings, interactive displays of all kinds. It is a small, richly packed museum, do-able in a Sunday afternoon.
After about an hour (which was plenty of time for a group of middle schoolers) we went into the Clive Davis Auditorium for our workshop. We were given a short introduction to a group called The Homemade Jamz Blues Band from Tupelo Mississippi, and then saw a video clip of the band's interview on the Today Show. All well, and good. But then...the band itself took the stage and we were treated to a short set of hard rocking original blues songs which had the kids screaming for more.
Who is this band? They are a family consisting of an 18 year old lead guitar player, a 16 year old bass player, and a 13 year old drummer, with dad on blues harp. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that these performers were kids. They have been playing together as a band for several years now, and have toured the world.
You can check out their web page at http://www.hmjamzbluesband.com/. They released their third CD in November.
After they played for us, they pulled up some chairs and told their story. We could tell they have told this story many times, but they were very comfortable sitting there talking to a bunch of kids not much different from them, at least age-wise. Ryan told us how, when the military family was unpacking to spend time stationed in Germany, he found the guitar his dad had bought years ago and abandoned. Ryan found a mentor in Mississppi and found his blues voice there too. Kyle told about trying to learn piano and guitar and giving up...too many notes to learn, he said. But he took to the bass because it only had four strings, and he plays it like he was born to do it. The youngest- Taya, who is 13, and a GIRL drummer- is, in fact, the same age as many of our own students. She told of being the tamborine player when she was 6 and then finding an old green drum kit left as trash at the curb and taking it home and learning it when, I think she said, she was 9. She is self-taught, but drives that band with power and impeccable time. Finally, Dad got to tell his story and his gentle, self-effacing manner told of a man bemused and delighted with the suprises his kids showed him. He joined them on blues harp only three years ago- and admitted to learning his art on youtube, but seems to have played all his life.
The boys play guitars made from car parts, mufflers, I think. This was Dad's idea, and is a catchy trademark image for a group that needs no gimmicks. Ryan told us that his guitar actually can spew colored smoke out of its "tailpipes", but that since we were indoors they were afraid they would set off the sprinklers, so they didn't use them.
One of our missions as music teachers who follow state and national standards to guide our teaching (Yes, there are such things.) is to present music to our students as a possible career, and show them ways they can make a career of their music skills and knowledge. The kids in the Homemade Jamz Blues Band sought out instruction for what they wanted to learn and have already launched a career that will carry them through their whole lives. What an inspiration!
I hope Ryan, Kyle and Taya have a long and successful career. I imagine that they will branch out, possibly play with other people along the way. They have already touched millions of lives, and I am grateful that my students are some of those. The museum was fun, and by itself a worthy outing. But meeting and hearing the Homemade Jamz Blues Band kicked our field trip into the realm of awesomeness that the kids of Sierra Madre and Eliot Middle Schools will not soon forget.
Friday, February 4, 2011
One that took.
Today, being the last day of finals week over at the high school, and the high school students thereby being on half days, a former member of my middle school orchestra stopped in to our class today to sit in and play with the kids. He's a sophomore now, and about as totally into music as a kid can get. He played obligatory violin in my class with all the rest of the third graders way back when, and then switched to study clarinet with me in 4th grade. He played all through elementary and middle school in the band and then the orchestra. Since entering high school he has made it his mission to learn all he can about every one of the woodwind instruments. He can play flute, oboe and clarinet with grace and ease, and sat between my 8th grade flute player and 8th grade clarinetist and jumped back and forth between the two parts. After class he asked if there was anything he could help with, like grading papers or something. I had this unsorted pile of music on my desk waiting to be put right, and I asked if he would want to tackle that. He happily took it on, mentioning that he is also the music librarian for his high school band. In no time at all, he had the music all sorted and put back into its correct folders.
As we hung out together, I asked him if he'd started to think about colleges yet, and did he think he might go to music school. Yes, he emphatically told me, he wants to go to music school. Julliard, no less. I can't tell you how happy it made me to hear him say that. In all the years that I have taught music- 15 in the public schools and many more before and still in private situations- not one of my students has ended up going to music school. I know there are many former students who still play for fun, and that is important and fulfilling in itself. But, finally, to have a student who has the passion to keep going all the way, and who has stayed connected with me is a new and wondrous lifetime achievement for me.
I can only take credit for getting him started. It's been his own drive and stick-to-itiveness that has gotten him this far. But I can't help thinking about my own high school music career, and how hanging-around-the-band- room-sorting-music-and-learning-every-instrument I was myself. I know what that's like. It's great that with all the distractions modern kids have, here is one who gets a kick out of the same things I did when I was his age a hundred million years ago. I don't know where he will end up, but I sure am going to enjoy watching him get there.
As we hung out together, I asked him if he'd started to think about colleges yet, and did he think he might go to music school. Yes, he emphatically told me, he wants to go to music school. Julliard, no less. I can't tell you how happy it made me to hear him say that. In all the years that I have taught music- 15 in the public schools and many more before and still in private situations- not one of my students has ended up going to music school. I know there are many former students who still play for fun, and that is important and fulfilling in itself. But, finally, to have a student who has the passion to keep going all the way, and who has stayed connected with me is a new and wondrous lifetime achievement for me.
I can only take credit for getting him started. It's been his own drive and stick-to-itiveness that has gotten him this far. But I can't help thinking about my own high school music career, and how hanging-around-the-band- room-sorting-music-and-learning-every-instrument I was myself. I know what that's like. It's great that with all the distractions modern kids have, here is one who gets a kick out of the same things I did when I was his age a hundred million years ago. I don't know where he will end up, but I sure am going to enjoy watching him get there.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Here we go again.
I know that our new/old governor here in California doesn't have plans to touch education in the next round of cuts which will come if he doesn't get the support for taxes that he needs, but I fear that the 2011-12 budget will necessitate further cuts to education anyway. There doesn't seem to be any bottom to the cuts. They can slash and slash and never reach the bone. And what happens if they DO reach the bone? Will they just cut off the limb altogether?
I have tried to keep my postings positive and focus on the joys of being a music teacher. But with the coming budget fights inevitably calling for even deeper cuts to our already chopped-up-and-stitched-together Music programs, I feel that this might be the time to do a little preemptive rallying, if not downright ranting.
I have lately been reading two excellent books by Daniel J. Levitin: This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and The World in Six Songs. Levitin is a music researcher and a musician, and both books deal with how and why we make and listen to music. Chock full of data and references to all kinds of music, the take-away from all of my reading is this: Music, more than any human endeavor, in its ubiquitous presence in our lives, is WHAT MAKES US HUMAN. One might extrapolate this point to all the other Arts, but it is Music that is my focus, and so I can only talk about that. We have music in every place, time and age of our lives. We have music for all reasons, for all people, everywhere forever. There has never been a time when humans did not make music. Some of the most ancient artifacts unearthed with the bones of the earliest human-like ancestors appear to be musical instruments. Singing is thought to be prelinguistic communication, an extension of the baby's crying, meaning that humans may have sung to each other before they spoke. We made music together and alone before we wrote or read, before we developed math or science. Music connects us to ourselves and each other in a way that nothing else can.
Yes, music develops the brain. Yes, it enhances learning of language, math, all the rest. Yes, as I have said before, music can act for social change. But all this is beside the point. There is no place or time that music doesn't exist. It accompanies everything from a wait in the dentist's office to an appendectomy. It attends our weddings, funerals, inaugurations, sporting events, birthday parties. No movie would make sense without its music score. No parade would draw a crowd without a marching band. No baseball game would feel complete without 50,000 fans singing the Star Spangled Banner and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Try going a whole day without hearing a note of music. Unless you are camping in the woods (Does birdsong count? Or the singing of coyotes in the dark?) you will likely find it impossible.
Our children will all need to be able to read and do math at a level to manage their lives. If we are doing our jobs right, they should master THAT by the time they are in 4th or 5th grade. Any more is just for getting into college. Like they say, after 3rd grade a child should be reading to learn, not learning to read. Yes, they need to know about the Missions and Ancient Civilizations and some Algebra and Geometry would be useful. But EVERY child will experience music throughout his life. Every child should have the tools in hand to PARTICIPATE in the music he or she experiences. If we remove music instruction from their core curriculum we deny children their very humanity.
I have tried to keep my postings positive and focus on the joys of being a music teacher. But with the coming budget fights inevitably calling for even deeper cuts to our already chopped-up-and-stitched-together Music programs, I feel that this might be the time to do a little preemptive rallying, if not downright ranting.
I have lately been reading two excellent books by Daniel J. Levitin: This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and The World in Six Songs. Levitin is a music researcher and a musician, and both books deal with how and why we make and listen to music. Chock full of data and references to all kinds of music, the take-away from all of my reading is this: Music, more than any human endeavor, in its ubiquitous presence in our lives, is WHAT MAKES US HUMAN. One might extrapolate this point to all the other Arts, but it is Music that is my focus, and so I can only talk about that. We have music in every place, time and age of our lives. We have music for all reasons, for all people, everywhere forever. There has never been a time when humans did not make music. Some of the most ancient artifacts unearthed with the bones of the earliest human-like ancestors appear to be musical instruments. Singing is thought to be prelinguistic communication, an extension of the baby's crying, meaning that humans may have sung to each other before they spoke. We made music together and alone before we wrote or read, before we developed math or science. Music connects us to ourselves and each other in a way that nothing else can.
Yes, music develops the brain. Yes, it enhances learning of language, math, all the rest. Yes, as I have said before, music can act for social change. But all this is beside the point. There is no place or time that music doesn't exist. It accompanies everything from a wait in the dentist's office to an appendectomy. It attends our weddings, funerals, inaugurations, sporting events, birthday parties. No movie would make sense without its music score. No parade would draw a crowd without a marching band. No baseball game would feel complete without 50,000 fans singing the Star Spangled Banner and Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Try going a whole day without hearing a note of music. Unless you are camping in the woods (Does birdsong count? Or the singing of coyotes in the dark?) you will likely find it impossible.
Our children will all need to be able to read and do math at a level to manage their lives. If we are doing our jobs right, they should master THAT by the time they are in 4th or 5th grade. Any more is just for getting into college. Like they say, after 3rd grade a child should be reading to learn, not learning to read. Yes, they need to know about the Missions and Ancient Civilizations and some Algebra and Geometry would be useful. But EVERY child will experience music throughout his life. Every child should have the tools in hand to PARTICIPATE in the music he or she experiences. If we remove music instruction from their core curriculum we deny children their very humanity.
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