Greetings from a prodigal blogger!
My, how time flies. It's the last day of April, and a perfect spring day in Colorado -- this evening's post is being typed outdoors in celebration.
Degree work has been quite frenzied over the past two weeks, and there's been a heavy dollop of concertizing on top of that, the most recent of which was with the community chorus conducted by one of my very dearest friends. He was short a soprano in his chamber group, so I filled in, and was thereby privy to two performances of a concert he'd entitled "The People's Chorus," a title I absolutely love...I find the concept inspiring. Too many people believe that music-making is a rarified-air kind of activity, that people who are musicians had to grow up in a special kind of family or live a special kind of life -- that musicians are born, not made, and you either are one or you're not. You either have a good voice or you don't. You either read music or you can't. How sad, especially in a world where people like Kodály have worked hard to get the message out: Music belongs to everyone. Art is a birthright, a necessity, something everyone can make and learn about and benefit from. Lots of people still don't believe this, and you'd think that a university town would have a greater proportion of people who do, who are courageous enough to be willing to take hold of their artistic inheritance and do something with it. And, to its credit, this particular university town does have many enthusiasts for the arts in various forms. However, the "rarified air" mentality is still hard to combat, maybe because it's either a cultural or a human tendency (and an extremely powerful one, either way) to choose to believe that one cannot learn/grow/change in order to fend off the guilt of not trying. So, we tend to stay the same....we dabble and form opinions, but we never really get down and dirty and comfortable with who we are so we can make a proper start toward who we'd like to be. Just think what would be possible if this were not the case!
One of the more magical parts of these concerts was a piece composed by another friend of mine on a text attributed to F.G. Lorca:
"The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves."
To my knowledge, Kodály and Lorca never interacted, but it definitely sounds like they were on the same page, doesn't it? However, perhaps Lorca reveals something of the Catch-22 involved here: by engaging with art, people come to understand themselves. But, without a pre-existing connection to their truest selves, how will they come to art to begin with? How will they recognize the solution to their thirst if they haven't acknowledged the thirst? This is the crux, and perhaps the hardest part of the musician's task. Obviously, the solution of teaching the very young to value art is the best one for our future, and it's usually a pretty short reach to get kids to be and express their true selves. But, what about the grownups? How can we reach out to them? Classical musicians can't out-spend Mark Zuckerberg or ABC, so how do we pry the public away from Facebook and "Dancing with the Stars" and get them out to a concert hall or a rehearsal or a class or a private lesson?
It strikes me that the answer may be "one at a time," but I think there might be something even closer to us that we must consider. In order to be compelling, in order to make art and teach lessons that are worth experiencing, we ourselves must be in touch with what compels us. In order to change the world, we need to lead by example. Heavy, I know, but necessary and beautiful....and maybe even sometimes fun. As mentioned above, kids are almost always rarin' to go on the authenticity-honest-self front, and they don't ever like to not have a good time.
So, despite the fact that you poor darlings haven't had a "real" assignment in weeks, I'm going to go with this as your task for the week:
All Levels
Spend time this week feeding your inner artist. For more specific advice, look here.
Spend time this week thinking about how you'd like to impact your community through music-making and teaching. Dream wildly. Imagine that money is no object. Be extravagant.
Feel free to email or call me up with your ideas -- 'tis the season for big dreams and brainstorming.
Also, get ready next week for the start of pre-AKI Solfa Boot Camp (my new idea for May and June). I'll be taking requests for specific areas you'd like to address, so again, feel free to email!
Showing posts with label aesthetic valuing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aesthetic valuing. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Lift Every Voice
Welcome, readers!
DISCLAIMER: While I'd like to think this post will be musically substantive, you should probably know up front that I'm going to sound kind of like a hippie. But, since I grew up in Portland and have spent the last decade spending large portions of my time in Boulder, I don't think any of you should really be that surprised.
Last week's Alan Lomax post, in combination with my journey to the OAKE conference a few weeks back, got me thinking about "music of the people" for the past few days. I tend to get a little shifty about this whole topic, torn between the fairly hard-core opinions of the traditional Kodály camp (the most conservative of whom tend to profess that the only legitimate folk music tradition in North America is that of its indigenous people, and all the English-language stuff is either stolen from Great Britain or composed, and therefore not technically folk music) and a more "progressive" point of view. I find the former far too restrictive (especially in its more extreme incarnations), but I'm also not entirely comfortable with the inclusion of songs like "Rock around the Clock" on this list assembled by NAofME (formerly MENC) of songs that have a place in the American "canon" of songs everyone should be able to sing. I think it's a sticky dilemma all around -- on the one hand, we want people to sing, and it stands to reason that they're more likely to sing songs they like. However, I sort of think of "Rock around the Clock" as the musical equivalent of Cheetos....many will find it appealing, but the song is fundamentally without musical or emotional (nutritional) value. And, like several other songs they include, it's pretty difficult to sing it well, which means that when people unaccustomed to singing try to sing it, it won't sound good. Now, one might argue that "it doesn't matter what it sounds like," but I agree with one of my favorite authorities on communal singing, Alice Parker, on this one. In her book Melodious Accord, Ms. Parker writes:
"...the statement 'I just want the people to enjoy singing; it doesn't matter how they sound' is meaningless. Music is sound, and the better it sounds, the better it is -- and the more people will be caught by it."
So, all of that has me taking a big step back into a more classic Kodály paradigm. But, at the same time, I don't really have a problem with "Edelweiss" or "Over the Rainbow" making the list. Is that just my personal taste talking? Maybe. Can we really consider either one of those pieces folk music? Nope. However, I think there's something emotionally honest and compelling about both of them, and I think they have melodies that are made for singing (even though there are some tricky leaps). I don't believe they're necessarily what we should be teaching kids to sing in kindergarten music classes, but I do think it'd be a great thing if kids grew up singing those songs at home with their families, and I feel that way about maybe 60% of that list, give or take. And, it should be said that I cut my teeth on the musical equivalent of strychnine in the form of really awful church music from the words-on-the-overhead-I-V-IV-I (no, that's not a typo)-sing-the-chorus-9000-times-Jesus-is-my-boyfriend tradition, and somehow I still came out loving Bach and Josquin, so there you go. Maybe all those Wee Sing and Simon & Garfunkel tunes (with a little help from the classical station always playing at my grandparents' house) were enough to prevent my permanent descent into the ignoble.
I'm asking all levels to do the same assignment yet again, but as always, I encourage you to regulate your own difficulty level -- if it's too easy, kick it up a notch; if it's too difficult, dial it back.
All Levels:
Read through this article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/how-communal-singing-disappeared-from-american-life/255094/
And check out this link (the NAofME list mentioned above):
http://www.nafme.org/resources/view/get-america-singing-again
Follow these steps:
1. Take a quick look through the list of songs on the link above. Without thinking too much about it, mark which ones you think everyone ought to be able to sing. If you don't know a song, skip it. If you're feeling conflicted because you LOVE a song, but you fear it might be trashy, include it -- I promise not to judge you.
2. Make a note of how much of NAofME's collection you actually chose to use. Sort the pieces into genres: true folk songs, patriotic songs, composed traditional songs (I'd put Stephen Foster in this category, but I'll leave John Denver and Joni Mitchell up to you), pop songs, or any other designation you come up with.
3. Dust off your solfa chops and put syllables to a few songs from each genre. Try to transcribe one from each genre in a key you think is appropriate for communal singing.
4. Analyze your transcriptions informally, but with an eye towards the elements you look for in your song collection analyses. What elements are easy to find? What elements are almost non-existent? What makes a song difficult or easy? How did you deal with the rhythms in the more syncopated examples? Did you find that you really didn't want to have to write down the rhythms the way that you actually sing them?
5. If you were to make your own list from the songs you chose, plus others you know, what songs would you include? Remember, these are songs you think every grownup in North America should know and be able to sing...not necessarily the songs you'd use in your classroom (so, in a sense, I'm asking you to choose with your heart rather than your head). How do your examples differ from the songs you chose to leave off your list? Do your own examples come from your Kodály song collection, or from another source? How personal are these songs to you?
6. Just for fun, as you go about your daily life, sing some of your favorite songs -- with others, or just by yourself. Who knows? Maybe you'll inspire other grownups to lift up their voices and sing.
DISCLAIMER: While I'd like to think this post will be musically substantive, you should probably know up front that I'm going to sound kind of like a hippie. But, since I grew up in Portland and have spent the last decade spending large portions of my time in Boulder, I don't think any of you should really be that surprised.
Last week's Alan Lomax post, in combination with my journey to the OAKE conference a few weeks back, got me thinking about "music of the people" for the past few days. I tend to get a little shifty about this whole topic, torn between the fairly hard-core opinions of the traditional Kodály camp (the most conservative of whom tend to profess that the only legitimate folk music tradition in North America is that of its indigenous people, and all the English-language stuff is either stolen from Great Britain or composed, and therefore not technically folk music) and a more "progressive" point of view. I find the former far too restrictive (especially in its more extreme incarnations), but I'm also not entirely comfortable with the inclusion of songs like "Rock around the Clock" on this list assembled by NAofME (formerly MENC) of songs that have a place in the American "canon" of songs everyone should be able to sing. I think it's a sticky dilemma all around -- on the one hand, we want people to sing, and it stands to reason that they're more likely to sing songs they like. However, I sort of think of "Rock around the Clock" as the musical equivalent of Cheetos....many will find it appealing, but the song is fundamentally without musical or emotional (nutritional) value. And, like several other songs they include, it's pretty difficult to sing it well, which means that when people unaccustomed to singing try to sing it, it won't sound good. Now, one might argue that "it doesn't matter what it sounds like," but I agree with one of my favorite authorities on communal singing, Alice Parker, on this one. In her book Melodious Accord, Ms. Parker writes:
"...the statement 'I just want the people to enjoy singing; it doesn't matter how they sound' is meaningless. Music is sound, and the better it sounds, the better it is -- and the more people will be caught by it."
So, all of that has me taking a big step back into a more classic Kodály paradigm. But, at the same time, I don't really have a problem with "Edelweiss" or "Over the Rainbow" making the list. Is that just my personal taste talking? Maybe. Can we really consider either one of those pieces folk music? Nope. However, I think there's something emotionally honest and compelling about both of them, and I think they have melodies that are made for singing (even though there are some tricky leaps). I don't believe they're necessarily what we should be teaching kids to sing in kindergarten music classes, but I do think it'd be a great thing if kids grew up singing those songs at home with their families, and I feel that way about maybe 60% of that list, give or take. And, it should be said that I cut my teeth on the musical equivalent of strychnine in the form of really awful church music from the words-on-the-overhead-I-V-IV-I (no, that's not a typo)-sing-the-chorus-9000-times-Jesus-is-my-boyfriend tradition, and somehow I still came out loving Bach and Josquin, so there you go. Maybe all those Wee Sing and Simon & Garfunkel tunes (with a little help from the classical station always playing at my grandparents' house) were enough to prevent my permanent descent into the ignoble.
I'm asking all levels to do the same assignment yet again, but as always, I encourage you to regulate your own difficulty level -- if it's too easy, kick it up a notch; if it's too difficult, dial it back.
All Levels:
Read through this article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/03/how-communal-singing-disappeared-from-american-life/255094/
And check out this link (the NAofME list mentioned above):
http://www.nafme.org/resources/view/get-america-singing-again
Follow these steps:
1. Take a quick look through the list of songs on the link above. Without thinking too much about it, mark which ones you think everyone ought to be able to sing. If you don't know a song, skip it. If you're feeling conflicted because you LOVE a song, but you fear it might be trashy, include it -- I promise not to judge you.
2. Make a note of how much of NAofME's collection you actually chose to use. Sort the pieces into genres: true folk songs, patriotic songs, composed traditional songs (I'd put Stephen Foster in this category, but I'll leave John Denver and Joni Mitchell up to you), pop songs, or any other designation you come up with.
3. Dust off your solfa chops and put syllables to a few songs from each genre. Try to transcribe one from each genre in a key you think is appropriate for communal singing.
4. Analyze your transcriptions informally, but with an eye towards the elements you look for in your song collection analyses. What elements are easy to find? What elements are almost non-existent? What makes a song difficult or easy? How did you deal with the rhythms in the more syncopated examples? Did you find that you really didn't want to have to write down the rhythms the way that you actually sing them?
5. If you were to make your own list from the songs you chose, plus others you know, what songs would you include? Remember, these are songs you think every grownup in North America should know and be able to sing...not necessarily the songs you'd use in your classroom (so, in a sense, I'm asking you to choose with your heart rather than your head). How do your examples differ from the songs you chose to leave off your list? Do your own examples come from your Kodály song collection, or from another source? How personal are these songs to you?
6. Just for fun, as you go about your daily life, sing some of your favorite songs -- with others, or just by yourself. Who knows? Maybe you'll inspire other grownups to lift up their voices and sing.
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