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Fascinating Arts-Education Dialogue on ArtsJournal…….

A fascinating “Debate on Arts Education”, hosted by ArtsJournal’s Douglas McLennan took place on an artsjournal blog from Dec 1st-5th. The entire dialogue is archived on the blog. It is especially interesting to get a sense of where each contributor is coming from and consider their perspectives within the context of the roles they play in the arts. Unfortunately it does not seem that any public school arts educators or students were involved as invited bloggers. Of course, since everything… Read More »Fascinating Arts-Education Dialogue on ArtsJournal…….

Responding to Representations in Musical Theater

Thanks to Jeff Chang for pointing out a recent article in the New York Times that discusses David Henry Hwang’s new musical “Yellow Face.” His new play addresses some of the issues of race, ethnicity and stereotypes that he also dealt with in his musical M. Butterfly in response to Miss Saigon. This reminded me of Julia Eklund Koza’s chapter Unhappy Happy Endings: Cultural Politics in the Broadway Musical Hit Once on This Island (1997; revised 2001) in her book… Read More »Responding to Representations in Musical Theater

Hip Hop In the Music Classroom? Discussing Rap & Misogyny

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… Read More »Hip Hop In the Music Classroom? Discussing Rap & Misogyny

Pitch Shifting Pop Songs….

Both digital and analog pitch shifting have been used for years by musicians to alter the sound of original musical material. Be it Ross Bagdasarian’s recordings of “The Chipmunks” , DJs using pitch shifting on a turntable to speed up or slow down a record in order to make it sync up with another record, or someone composing on a computer using digital pitch shifting software, the technique is widely used across musical genres. One recent application of pitch shifting… Read More »Pitch Shifting Pop Songs….

Reflections on using American Idol in the Music Classroom

As many readers know – ABC world news tonight broadcasted a story on the use of American Idol in the music Classroom recently that included me and many of my 5th-7th grade general music students. In this post I want to provide some background information on why I chose to use the show in my classroom, how I use it, why I participated in the news story and my reflections on the entire experience. I also just found out about… Read More »Reflections on using American Idol in the Music Classroom