UNISON - WA ACDA's Online Newsletter
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Calling all members! Multi-Cultural reading session ideas:
A new idea for this summers' multi-cultural reading session is to compile a list of multi-cultural music that has worked in your classroom/with your ensemble. Since the style and cultural appeal of the various musics we chose to teach can be related to our own comfort level and experiences, let's all contribute and see what diversity of literature we can compile together.
If you have multi-cultural pieces you think everyone should know about, please email the title, composer/arranger, publisher and voicing you have used to: brian.hoskins@rentonschools.us.
Let's see what all of us has to offer!
Brian E Hoskins
Choral Conductor
Lindbergh High School/Nelsen Middle School
LHS: 425-204-3291
NMS: 425-204-3076
brian.hoskins@rentonschools.us
Starting the year with multi-cultural music need not be daunting
by Brian Hoskins, R & S Chair for Multi-Cultural Music
I
t is my pleasure to be serving as the Multi-Cultural Perspectives Chair for the next two years. I have been teaching public school choral music for twelve years and hope to share some of what I have learned with you while part of the WA ACDA Board.
As the school year begins, it is always a challenge to continue to find new and interesting music that will capture my students from day one.
In my program I have always taught a majority of multi-cultural music throughout the year. Starting the students, from day one, with terms and musical elements found in many multi-cultural pieces is a great way to prepare them for various styles of music, and a great way to start the year with singing, not talking.
This year I’ll be starting “Akanamandle” (a Zulu freedom/church song) on the first day of class with my advanced middle school choir. For my younger students, I’ll take a piece like “Tue Tue” or “Sansa Kroma” (easily found online – music and text) and begin their first day experience in music with some percussion ostinatos and singing of unison melodies (a great collection is “Sing: Songs of South Africa and the Balkins” by Village Harmony, edited by Patty Cuyler, www.villageharmony.org - it has great pieces for all levels).
These pieces give you the opportunity to spend several days creating new ostinatos and melodic ostinatos to accompany groups singing the melody.
I purposefully skip the class rules and policies, along with the expectations of the choral program at my school, until the beginning of the second week of school. The first few days of classes inundate our students with too many rules, expectations and routines. Taking time for them to be expressive and make sound in choir pulls them in to my program while providing relief from the anxieties of new teachers and up to six different routines.
This also gives me a chance to model what I expect of the students in class while participating with them in creating music, a sneaky way to get my expectations across without talking at them. The results have always been positive and the students immediately learn that choir is for singing and musicing, every day.
Depending on the focus and attention span of my students (it varies from year to year), when I begin the routine and expectations speech, I can do so in small chunks while adding new elements to the pieces we’ve begun, helping keep them active and interested.
For my advanced groups in high school, I spend a lot of time searching for authentic and "real’ multi-cultural music. What I mean by "real" is finding arrangers and composers that do not water down or change (within reason) a great deal of the thematic material of the piece.
I am also a strong believer that music from other cultures should be performed using the language from where they were created. I’ll contradict myself immediately and say that it is not always possible to keep from English translations of multi-cultural music. I use those arrangements only if there is something musically important I want my singers to learn from the arrangement, such as Stephen Hatfield’s “African Celebration” or “The Virgin Mary had a Baby Boy”.
Remember that multi-cultural music needs to be set in a context for your students. It needs to have a connection to real human action and that it is a door to new understanding of the world around. Using videos, pictures, stories and, more importantly, musical activities such as drumming and musical and melodic ostinatos draw your students into the context of the piece.
It may seem like a lot to tackle, but a little online research or a conversation with one of your colleagues can create a strong musical experience for your students; one wherein they grasp the music with a strong conviction of its context within culture, such as an African freedom song, a piece composed by a nationalist, a folk song or a thematic composition.
Some of my favorite composers/arrangers who, to me and my students, seem to grasp cultural themes proficiently are Stephen Hatfield (“All Too Soon”, “Jabula Jesu”, “La Lluvia”, “Takeda No Komoriuta”, “Son de Camaguey”, “Tjak!”), Francisco Núñez (“Las Mananitas”, “Three Dominican Folk Songs”, “Amani”, “Crióme Mi Madre”, “Misa Pequeña Para Niños”), Nick Page (“Niska Banja”), Doreen Rao (“Dodi Li” and many of the CME titles) and many, many more.
Many of you are thinking that you have heard of the composers/arrangers above and that some of their music is too difficult for the ensembles you have at your school. That’s exactly what I have thought as well!
If you like the possibility of a multi-cultural piece that seems beyond the skill of your singers, contact the composer/arranger and say “I want to do this piece, but it is really difficult for my students right now” or “I teach middle school and I don’t have boys that can sing low enough for the parts you have written”. A great composer is going to tell you that the melody, most likely, came from a unison line and the rest of it is their interpretation.
Take “Amani” by Francisco Núñez /Jim Papoulis. I have done this piece with my middle school choirs. The three-part treble is fairly challenging for beginning 7th and 8th grade girls, but I also wanted my boys to experience the music as well. Having worked with Francisco in the past, I know that he wants youth to have a great musical experience, so when the parts have seemed too advanced, I put everyone on a unison melody.
There are movements that go hand in hand with “Amani”, from the man Francisco and Jim Papoulis heard the piece originally (I’d love to teach you if you are interested), that also bring more to the piece than just the melody.
The best thing about a good multi-cultural composer is that they want to share their music with you and they want you to share it with your students. I have never run into a composer who wasn’t willing to be flexible about their arrangement with public school students. If the composer is touchy about it, they may not be someone you want to collaborate with at that time.
Be creative and do not be daunted by the music if it ‘looks’ too difficult. Some pieces will have to wait for your students to gain more musical skill (towards the end of the year or another year), but the majority can work for your choir with a little work, communication and flexibility. You and your students will benefit from the challenge!