Readings Thoughts: Powell and Bernstein

Powell, B. & Berstein, S. (2017). Popular Music and Modern Band Principles.  Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education (2017) 

What I find interesting about current Music education, is that it cuts out a large portion of music that is currently viable.  I understand why the focus might be on classical music, but most people don’t interact with classical music on a day-to-day basis.  Popular music is popular for a reason, but most music education classes doesn’t address this at all.  It seems a little strange to me that we wouldn’t teach popular music at all, because that is the form of music most people would interact with throughout their lives.  I feel like most music classes deem modern band music as ‘unimportant,’ or ‘low brow art’, and not teach it, but I feel like that does a huge disservice to a large portion of the population.  Music is first and foremost, a social, fun activity that brings communities together.  In my experience, people want to learn music, and they want to learn the music they like, and often, that is popular music. I agree with this article and how it addresses music. I have seen a lot of success with the current model of music education, but I went to a performing arts high school, where people auditioned for the program.  The students I’ve seen have already wanted to learn classical music, and I think that this model of music will open the doors for many more people to learn and experience music in meaningful ways. 

My family is a musical family, but me and my sister were the only ones to play in an orchestra or have formal music theory education, but the musician I look up to most is my dad. He has learned everything he knows informally but can apply it and make music to a degree I feel like I could never accomplish.  In class, when we discuss this type of learning, I think of my dad a lot, because he models this type of teaching everywhere he goes.  He volunteers at a local elementary school helping students write their own songs, and he teaches people in our church how to play instruments to engage in worship music, and he writes and records his owns songs, which including musicians he knows as much as he can. Through him, I have seen this informal model of teaching work, and it has created results I have not seen in school.  The school club he helps is especially interesting, because a lot of these kids can’t read music, and don’t know how the notation works, but they can still write songs. Through imitating what they’ve heard before, they can create some really moving pieces of music, and all my dad does is guide them and play guitar for them. 

I think this is a good demonstration of how important composing is, which is one area of music that I haven’t been able to learn through school but is so intuitive for children. 

I really appreciated the idea of music as a second language.  It puts music on equal ground for everyone, and takes away the fear of music, I think.  Everyone who speaks a language might have different levels of understanding the language, and use the language in different ways, but they all have some ownership over the language. If we could apply that to music, I would be so excited to see what people would make.