Your Choir, Their Refuge: The Strength of Choir in a Trans Student's World
Presenter: Michael Bussewitz-Quarm
Composer and educator Michael Bussewitz-Quarm shares his own story and stories within the trans community about the incredible experience of "coming out" and living peacefully as a transgender musician. There are many challenges and struggles that are experienced by the trans community, and many of those struggles are magnified for our students. Together, we can develop a holistic approach to enabling the trans student to not only survive, but thrive!
Presenter: Michael Bussewitz-Quarm
Composer and educator Michael Bussewitz-Quarm shares his own story and stories within the trans community about the incredible experience of "coming out" and living peacefully as a transgender musician. There are many challenges and struggles that are experienced by the trans community, and many of those struggles are magnified for our students. Together, we can develop a holistic approach to enabling the trans student to not only survive, but thrive!
Teaching Choral Music of the African Diaspora: Toward a Living Black History
Panel Discussion with H. Roz Woll and Roy Jennings
In Living Black History, Marable asserts the current racial domain can be “undermined . . . by harnessing the living power of black heritage and our narratives of resistance” (Marable 2006:xx). This panel discussion, by analyzing a college course—“Choral Music of the African Diaspora: Toward a Living Black History”— investigates how a choral curriculum can “stimulate a new kind of historically grounded conversation about race and the destructive processes of racialization,” (Marable) and prepare students for effective global citizenship. Extending work of the Chicago Center for Urban Life & Culture, the course applied a community-based pedagogy to music of the African diaspora, incorporating off-campus class sessions, guest presenters, readings, recordings, singing, and research projects, foregrounding nuanced and varied Black perspectives. The course encouraged students to transcend “essentialized notions of race while simultaneously [. . .] analy[zing] . . . the significance of racism” (Mullings, Reframing Global Justice 2009:7).
Panel Discussion with H. Roz Woll and Roy Jennings
In Living Black History, Marable asserts the current racial domain can be “undermined . . . by harnessing the living power of black heritage and our narratives of resistance” (Marable 2006:xx). This panel discussion, by analyzing a college course—“Choral Music of the African Diaspora: Toward a Living Black History”— investigates how a choral curriculum can “stimulate a new kind of historically grounded conversation about race and the destructive processes of racialization,” (Marable) and prepare students for effective global citizenship. Extending work of the Chicago Center for Urban Life & Culture, the course applied a community-based pedagogy to music of the African diaspora, incorporating off-campus class sessions, guest presenters, readings, recordings, singing, and research projects, foregrounding nuanced and varied Black perspectives. The course encouraged students to transcend “essentialized notions of race while simultaneously [. . .] analy[zing] . . . the significance of racism” (Mullings, Reframing Global Justice 2009:7).
Resistance through Creative Collaboration: Collective Songwriting for Social Justice and Artistic Citizenship
Presenter: Mariel Berger
Music can elevate our consciousness, help us envision a more just world, and also propel us to action. As educators, musicians, and artistic citizens, we have a responsibility to teach music through a lens of social justice. Writing and singing social justice songs help us to rewrite the world, one song at a time. And writing songs collectively reminds us of the importance and power of co-imagining and co-creating. We'll sing the songs in the classrooms, bring the songs to protests, and create space for singing during tense political conversations and meetings. Justice Music helps sustain us during trying times-- it heals us, invigorates us and helps us feel more connected to each other. And those with oppressive beliefs might hear us sing a song of liberation and start to understand more. In this seminar, we'll sing social justice songs, learn how to write songs collectively, and brainstorm ways to create a movement of collaborative song-making, starting in the classroom.
Presenter: Mariel Berger
Music can elevate our consciousness, help us envision a more just world, and also propel us to action. As educators, musicians, and artistic citizens, we have a responsibility to teach music through a lens of social justice. Writing and singing social justice songs help us to rewrite the world, one song at a time. And writing songs collectively reminds us of the importance and power of co-imagining and co-creating. We'll sing the songs in the classrooms, bring the songs to protests, and create space for singing during tense political conversations and meetings. Justice Music helps sustain us during trying times-- it heals us, invigorates us and helps us feel more connected to each other. And those with oppressive beliefs might hear us sing a song of liberation and start to understand more. In this seminar, we'll sing social justice songs, learn how to write songs collectively, and brainstorm ways to create a movement of collaborative song-making, starting in the classroom.
Liberation Through Musicing: The K-12 Music Classroom as a Social Justice Playground
Presenter: Martin Urbach
This hands-on workshop is aimed at transforming our classrooms into safe and fertile playgrounds for social justice through music making. The musical games in this workshop promote interpersonal connections, cross-cultural dialogue, and the musical skills necessary for students to come together as a community of empowered and socially conscious music makers. Participants will use their bodies, voices and percussion instruments, to learn Afro-Brazilian rhythms, orchestration, improvisation, and rhyming schemes to recreate Olodum’s mission of combating discrimination, boost the self-esteem and pride of African-Brazilians, and fight to secure civil and human rights for marginalized people. This workshop bridges concepts of critical pedagogy, anti racist practices with youth development concepts, culturally responsive pedagogy and music making. Participants will walk away with a basic understanding of Samba Reggae polyrhythms, lyric writing and pedagogy of the oppressed connections.
Presenter: Martin Urbach
This hands-on workshop is aimed at transforming our classrooms into safe and fertile playgrounds for social justice through music making. The musical games in this workshop promote interpersonal connections, cross-cultural dialogue, and the musical skills necessary for students to come together as a community of empowered and socially conscious music makers. Participants will use their bodies, voices and percussion instruments, to learn Afro-Brazilian rhythms, orchestration, improvisation, and rhyming schemes to recreate Olodum’s mission of combating discrimination, boost the self-esteem and pride of African-Brazilians, and fight to secure civil and human rights for marginalized people. This workshop bridges concepts of critical pedagogy, anti racist practices with youth development concepts, culturally responsive pedagogy and music making. Participants will walk away with a basic understanding of Samba Reggae polyrhythms, lyric writing and pedagogy of the oppressed connections.
Building Student Voice via Technology, Social Awareness and Musical Self-Expression
Presenter: Adam Goldberg
As members of both the Special Needs and Minority communities, my student band, the P177Q Technology Band, embarked on a project designed to elicit greater self-awareness and self-expression via music. Join my students as they are encouraged to express their deeper emotions and experiences associated with disenfranchisement using music as a vehicle for self-expression; first within very structured constraints and eventually, as they mature, more and more freely and independently until they eventually compose and record their own group composition.
Presenter: Adam Goldberg
As members of both the Special Needs and Minority communities, my student band, the P177Q Technology Band, embarked on a project designed to elicit greater self-awareness and self-expression via music. Join my students as they are encouraged to express their deeper emotions and experiences associated with disenfranchisement using music as a vehicle for self-expression; first within very structured constraints and eventually, as they mature, more and more freely and independently until they eventually compose and record their own group composition.
“Pretty Good for a Girl:” Female Fiddlers with Activist Agendas
Presenter: Dr. Susan Davis
Women fiddlers are often underestimated or marginalized as American Roots instrumentalists, even though several have achieved acclaim as vocalists in the field. These women are essentially nonexistent from public school curricula. While school orchestras do a thorough job of attending to western classical repertoire, the voices and roles of women in American music history, especially women of color, are often noticeably absent. This session will bring to light the important work of several women fiddlers in American Roots music (e.g., Rhiannon Giddens, Sara Watkins), sharing their stories of artistic citizenship and exploring a rich source of music, culture, and discourse surrounding issues of responsibility, agency, authenticity, ownership, gender, race and identity.
Presenter: Dr. Susan Davis
Women fiddlers are often underestimated or marginalized as American Roots instrumentalists, even though several have achieved acclaim as vocalists in the field. These women are essentially nonexistent from public school curricula. While school orchestras do a thorough job of attending to western classical repertoire, the voices and roles of women in American music history, especially women of color, are often noticeably absent. This session will bring to light the important work of several women fiddlers in American Roots music (e.g., Rhiannon Giddens, Sara Watkins), sharing their stories of artistic citizenship and exploring a rich source of music, culture, and discourse surrounding issues of responsibility, agency, authenticity, ownership, gender, race and identity.
A Song With Words - The Melodies of a Trans Femme in the World of Music
Presenters: Dr. Kristin Mozeiko and katie bishop
This session will provide insight on the relationship music can play in a transgender music students’ life within a specific institutional and cultural context. Possible topics may include the nuances of discrimination, the role of social media, the supportive and unsupportive roles of music educators, music as an emotional outlet, and redefining the institutional and cultural narrative.
Presenters: Dr. Kristin Mozeiko and katie bishop
This session will provide insight on the relationship music can play in a transgender music students’ life within a specific institutional and cultural context. Possible topics may include the nuances of discrimination, the role of social media, the supportive and unsupportive roles of music educators, music as an emotional outlet, and redefining the institutional and cultural narrative.
Creating an Inclusive Curriculum. Multicultural Music and Intercultural Harmony
Presenter: Peter Douskalis
Music education curriculum to date largely remains based in Western European traditions and United States traditions, particularly in United States schools. Music education scholars across the world have called for the implementation of more multicultural music curriculum in schools, but without a selection of prearranged resources, teachers have found it difficult to break away from the Western European tradition that is so readily available. This session will question the traditions and paradigms of the binding mentality of music education curriculum implementation in United States schools and will further explore the possibilities and abilities of music educators to expand their curriculum to be culturally diverse, inclusive, and promote intercultural harmony.
Presenter: Peter Douskalis
Music education curriculum to date largely remains based in Western European traditions and United States traditions, particularly in United States schools. Music education scholars across the world have called for the implementation of more multicultural music curriculum in schools, but without a selection of prearranged resources, teachers have found it difficult to break away from the Western European tradition that is so readily available. This session will question the traditions and paradigms of the binding mentality of music education curriculum implementation in United States schools and will further explore the possibilities and abilities of music educators to expand their curriculum to be culturally diverse, inclusive, and promote intercultural harmony.