Wether or not your music program includes string education, it is well worth your time to listen to and consider including this NPR interview with violinist Regina Carter in your classes. Carter, a winner of a MacArthur Genius grant, discusses her work interpreting African folk music and realizing several pieces in new contexts on her latest album, among other aspects of her thoughts on performing and music in general. The instrumentation which includes a violin, accordian, and kora are compelling in the ways she reimagines the folk music on the album. Carter’s project holds exciting potential for music educators and music students both in terms of the conversations and thinking related to her album and more broadly to the idea of gaining an understanding and developing a relationship with folk music through the process of reinterpreting it for a new context.
Approaching a project such as this would take great care and preparation, particularly in helping students think through issues of respect, ethics, musicality, and cultural validity. (For a fabulous article on issues of music education and cultural validity see Abril, C. (2006). Music that represents culture. Music Educators Journal, 93(1), 38-45.) Consider all of the musical skills and knowledge students would gain through the process of getting to know the original music, its background, social and cultural context; working through the multiple options of reinterpriting it; learning how to rehearse and perform it; and discussing their interpretations and new understandings with each other and knowledgeable others outside of the classroom; etc.
A project of this sort could work very well in the context of small chamber groups. A recent discussion regarding chamber music in schools during a Monday Night MusicedChat demonstrates some of our peers’ thinking on the benefits of integrating opportunities for our students to work in small ensemble contexts. Carter’s Reverse Thread album concept might serve as an inspirational and exciting chamber music project for next school year.
Listen to excerpts from Reverse Thread below:
To provide K-12 students in Missouri schools the opportunity to write original works in a diversity of musical styles and to present these pieces to their schools and at a music festival at the University of Missouri-Columbia on April 23 2011.. Young Composers Students from Missouri schools from Grades K-12 are eligible to submit an original piece to the Creating Original Music Project.. Public School Music Teachers Each student who applies must have the signature and sponsorship of their schools music teacher..