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House Subcommittee Hearing on Degrading Stereotypes of Women in Music & Media

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.… Read More »House Subcommittee Hearing on Degrading Stereotypes of Women in Music & Media

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

Pre-mixing Rjd2

 Pre-Mixing Rjd2 I’m a big fan of musicians allowing people to remix their music. Hip Hop musician Rjd2 is currently allowing people to pre-mix his music. Unlike a remix in which one works on a piece of music already created, Rjd2 has provided people with samples from a track yet to be released and inviting people to create their own music from the samples. Rather than providing loops he has provided samples as hits. It will be interesting to see… Read More »Pre-mixing Rjd2

Meaningful Music Theory

I was interested to read about Roger Bourland’s approaches to teaching music theory and making it more meaningful to his students. One of the approaches that stood out as a great idea was having the students bring music they are working on to his class to analyze. This makes so much sense! What types of approaches do you use to make theory meaningful to your students? Is there collaboration in your department between the theory and ensemble aspects of the… Read More »Meaningful Music Theory

Urban Music Education? Music programs, Technology & Popular Music

The Christian Science Monitor had a very interesting article a couple of days ago that raises several important things for music educators to think about. The article discusses music school graduates and urban cultural institutions providing urban schools with music programs.While it is very positive that students are receiving music programs, one might be concerned that a trend will continue in which schools do not hire music education professionals but rather rely on musicians outside the school not necessarily educated… Read More »Urban Music Education? Music programs, Technology & Popular Music