Explore how music divides - and unites.
Who: All people who love music
What: Music In Our Schools Month
When: All month long
Websites: Music for All [1]
Did you know...
Sources: School Music Matters [2] and Music for All [3]
Student Voices
Sometimes, music can create powerful intergroup connections, shattering stereotypes:
A music-tutoring program matches mostly affluent, mostly white Carnegie-Mellon University students with mostly impoverished, mostly black middle-schoolers, helping everyone involved shatter stereotypes. Carnegie-Mellon student Annie Savarese launched the program in 2002. "It completely opened my eyes," she said, referring to how little she knew about the lives of young people within walking distance of her college, people she otherwise never would have met. "I'm teaching them about music, but they're teaching me about the world." Savarese recalls a young flutist who went to band class every day, day after day, simply pushing air through her instrument, unable to make music. In a tutoring session, with one-on-one attention from Savarese, the girl started playing notes. "That," Savarese said, "was a nice moment."
Other times, music itself can perpetuate stereotypes:
"I've noticed that a lot of music puts women in a shallow light. With some of the women singers out there, there's this theme of competition, like you have to be better than everyone, look better than everyone."
-- Virginia Tran, 16
"I'm an African American female -- full black, I mean I'm pretty dark. I think a lot of music and videos paint this picture of the interracial or light-skinned girls as being the most beautiful. I think that bothers me more than some of the explicit stuff -- it bothers me more than the misogyny."
-- Shawna Fitz, 16
Discussion Questions
Activity Ideas
Books (and Music!) in the Mix
Music for the End of Time ($17) chronicles the real-life story of French composer Olivier Messiaen and his imprisonment in a World War II concentration camp.
(Grades 4-6) Eerdmans Books for Young Readers; ISBN# 0-8028-5229-7
Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad ($15) contains 16 spirituals slaves used in their quest for freedom.
(All Grades) Appleseed Recordings; ASIN# B000005BPI
Oscar: The Life and Music of Oscar Peterson ($16.95) looks at one of the great jazz musicians of all time. The biography also shows how the history of jazz parallels the history of confronting racism.
(Grades 6-12) Groundwood Books; ISBN# 0-888-99537-7
Links:
[1] http://www.menc.org
[2] http://www.schoolmusicmatters.com
[3] http://www.musicforall.org/
[4] http://www.archive.org/details/WhatCanOneLittlePersonDo
[5] http://play.rhapsody.com/simonandgarfunkel/theessentialsimongarfunkel/atthezoo?didAutoplayBounce=true