Tuesday, March 19, 2013

How do you get kids to like music?

A lot of times having students motivated about music is not necessarily the issue.  Often times the motivation needs to be more directed towards parents and administrators.  I recently attended a music educators conference and there was a very eye opening fact presented.  As a music educator, I will spend my entire life recruiting and trying to get students to join in music classes.  This is an aspect that no math, science, English, or history teacher will ever have to experience.  At times it doesn't seem quite fair, but that means that I will have to just work that much harder once I am in the work place.  This introduction is just an intro to the remainder of the blog post, but these are things to just keep in mind.

It seems that everyone has been exposed to music in their life, but it is rather a limited exposure.  Because of this limited exposure, often times, many styles of music are ignored and receive little to no notice.  Here are just a few new styles of music you may not have heard that are very interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NausAboQwRE
This first style of music is called gamelan.  It originates from Indonesia and is a very sacred type of music.  In fact, in order to have a gamelan you have to have special permission from the government of Indonesia because the gamelan is considered to have a soul of its own.






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTPxqUtlLdo
Another style of music is sitar music.  This originates from India and has a strong Hindu influence.  This music can be loosely compared to American jazz because it is based significantly on improvisation and other elements that are used in jazz music.


Another thing about music is that it can be applied to your lives in several different situations.  That includes other subjects in school.  One such example is in your history class.  There have been many sound tracks written that are focused specifically around historical events.  One such example is the movie Gettysburg.  As you listen to this soundtrack, it allows you to feel like you are right there at Gettysburg when the battle was happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohunFbq5Lk

Then there is music that is listened to just for enjoyment.  One style of music that I enjoy listening to just for enjoyment is jazz, but you may enjoy listening to rock, country, pop. classical, or new age music.  An example of music that I enjoy can be found at this link.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GgXqIf9h4s


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2 comments:

  1. KatieMarch 20, 2013 at 7:50 PM

    I totally relate to the realization that you will always have to be recruiting students. With teaching theatre it will be the same way for me. However, I think that just makes it more exciting. If we love what we do, we will want to share it with others so recruiting is easy.
    Listening to that music was wonderful. I had never heard of the first type and sitar music I only knew from the movie Moulin Rouge which was not a great representation. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Amy AlexandraMarch 24, 2013 at 12:33 PM

    I didn't know that music educators spend a lot of their time recruiting. I think that the arts are still a required subject in middle and high schools, right? So I would have assumed that you would always have the enrollment that you needed.

    I like how you made connections between sitar and jazz. Research shows that people develop in-depth understandings of concepts in proportion to the connections they make to those concepts. I think you will be a great music teacher if you can show students how the music they like can be connected to unfamiliar styles and genres.

    Thanks for your posting!

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