Know thy music

Viewing music as a global, human activity

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

I love music. I love talking about music. I love listening to music. I love sharing the music I like with others. I love getting song or artist recommendations. I love debating music. I love discussing decades of music. I love learning about where my favorite music comes from. Did you know that Pink adopted her edgy persona after a conversation with Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes? In fact, Perry wrote the song Get the Party Started for Pink, and she took it to #4 on the Billboard 100. Perry also co-wrote a large part of Pink’s second album, Missundaztood.

Lately, I’ve noticed that my students don’t really talk about music. Music seems to be a background sound they don’t even notice anymore. When I question my students about their favorite artists, they name the obligatory mega-stars: Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and Beyonce. They may have been to an Ed Sheeran concert, but they don’t really listen to Ed Sheeran music regularly. In fact, aside from Swifties, I don’t see many of my students being fans of music.

What’s really sad is when students point to TikTok or YouTube as a source of their favorite music. They might say that Endgame is their favorite song, but they don’t listen to music by the YouTuber Waterflame; they have it on in the background while they play Geometry Dash. Especially among ten-year-old boys, video game music or soundtracks from Japanese Anime seem to be really popular. My male students love games like Kingdom Hearts and shows like Fullmetal Alchemist.

When I ask them to pick out their favorite song, they point to a series’ theme song or a particular YouTuber. Now, I’m not going to comment on whether YouTubers are actual musicians or if video game soundtracks are albums. It’s not my place to criticize what my students listen to. I am more interested in observations.

I observe that music for fifth-graders is different than music for seniors in high school. The term artist means something different to a ten-year-old than it does to a 40-year-old. I’m not going to try to compare Bob Dylan to Koji Kondo, who many consider to be the greatest video game music composer of all-time. Kpop? Dubstep? It really doesn’t matter what my students listen to; what I’m interested in is whether they are actually listening.

I’m helping my students become active listeners in a couple of ways. One, I’ve started an after-school Now Spinning Classic Albums club. I’ve written more about it here (with a soon-to-be-published update post coming soon). Every week, we gather to listen to music, talk about music, and learn about where particular songs or artists come from. This has been an incredible learning experience for both me and the handful of students who have signed up to participate.

Another routine I started in my classroom, is to incorporate music into my everyday classroom experience. I’ve set up my turntable, speakers, and brought my small collection of vinyl records to play for students. Last year, I started each day with some music, encouraging my students to actively listen to a particular song or artist. I taught them how there are different tiers of listening: affective listening, structural listening, and dialogic listening. 

Affective listening is the most basic. What instruments do you hear? What genre of music is this? What emotions does this evoke? How fast or slow is it? 

Structural listening is more focused on a particular element of a song. How does the artist or composer move from one idea to another? Why? What underlying questions does the piece pose and how does it answer these questions, if at all? How does the lyrics relate to the sounds? 

Dialogic listening is the most complex and time-consuming. Here, students are analyzing what they are hearing with other primary and secondary sources. For example, I might ask students to compare one song to different song by the same artist. I could have students listen to a song and then read a newspaper article or review from the same era. 

Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day to really dive into the stories behind specific albums or artists. Still, I’m slowly working to create a more complete listening learning experience that teaches students how to examine song lyrics and the political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that influence songs and artists. I want students to know where their favorite music comes from, while introducing them to music they may not know.

More importantly, I think kids should listen to music from previous generations. They don’t need to automatically become Beatles fans just because…well, because it’s The Beatles. I want students to take a more active role of listening to music in their lives, not just in the background of their favorite video game or TikTok video.

As Professor Michael Spitzer, a British musicologist and academic states in his book, The Musical Human: A History of Life on Earth:

Music is participatory in a duel and interlinked sense. We fill our lives with music as a soundtrack. We sink ourselves into the music in an act of focused listening.

I want students to understand that musical genres come from times and places in history. For example, Country music originated in the rural American South in the early 20th century. R&B originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. Jazz musicians such as Louis Jordan and Ray Charles helped to bridge the gap between jazz and rhythm and blues in the 1940s and 1950s.

I want students to know that music in intentional. Protests songs during the Civil Rights Movement united people in a fight to change society. This music is not background music. This music is front and center in the lives of everyday people, social activists, and celebrities.

Now, I don’t expect my students to become music historians, but I do think that learning about music is a great entrypoint into learning about history, especially US history. Students should know where their music comes from and why certain music has lasted throughout the years. They should know that Beyonce couldn’t have become Beyonce without Aretha Franklin, who, in turn, was influenced by Mahalia Jackson.

I think that to know where your favorite music comes from is to know yourself better.

And that is my ultimate goal for students.

Resources

TeachRock has amazing educator resources to use with students. I’ve already used many of their Trace It Back lessons with students. They may be geared toward middle and high school students, my fifth-graders love learning about where their music comes from. If only I could get Steven Van Zandt to come and be a guest speaker for my class!

History of American Music

How History Influences Music

Musical Trends Throughout the Decades

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Have a great week!

—Adrian