Bach to Pop:
Balancing Folk, Masterworks and Popular Music in the Kodály-centered Elementary General Music Classroom
As
many of general music teachers have experienced, fifth, sixth, and seventh
grade students in today’s general music classroom usually do not have an
inherent connection to folk music or masterworks and thus struggle to
appreciate such music. The students
often state that folk songs are boring or childish, and they often complain
about learning about “dead guys” every time a new composer is introduced. Folk
music is not generally the music of the students’ inherent culture
anymore. Many families do not play
instruments or sing much at home.
Parents may remember a song from their own General Music class, but folk
music is starting to be left behind.
Music teachers need to keep folk music alive, as it is perfect for
teaching the intricacies of pitch and rhythm, giving children a great
background history lesson into their ancestors. However, to connect to children of today’s world even more
music teachers need to start incorporating into their curriculum the music of
the students “culture”- songs they can immediately relate to. By using traditional folk music along
with more familiar music, general music teachers can put together a curriculum
that relates to students lives and remains in touch with our history.
The most
successful system for relating folk music to musical concepts in an organized sequence
is the Kodály philosophy, put together by Zoltán Kodály in Hungary in the
mid-twentieth century. There are five main premises of the Kodály philosophy:
1) True Musical Literacy -- the ability to read, write, and think music- is the
right of every human being, 2) Music learning must begin with the voice, 3) The
education of the musical ear must begin in Kindergarten, or earlier, and the
primary grades if it is to be completely successful, 4) Music skills and
concepts necessary for musical literacy should be taught with folk music of the
mother tongue 5) Only music of unquestionable quality- both folk and composed-
should be used (deVries 25). This paper will focus on the last point and
discuss the legitimacy of adding contemporary popular music to the cannon of
Kodály-accepted folk songs. So, where does popular music fit in?
In 1967, the Music
Educators National Conference (MENC), now the National Association for Music
Educators (NAfME) hosted a symposium of music educators held at Tanglewood. At
this symposium a panel decided that music classes needed to connect more to the
musical experiences students and adults have outside the classroom. The panel agreed at Tanglewood that:
“music of all periods, styles, forms, and cultures belongs in the curriculum…
including popular teenage music and avant-garde music (Choate 139 via Isbell
2).” They were trying to address
the fact that many students give the following reasons for not participating,
or dropping out of a music program: there is a lack of interest and there are
poor repertory choices to keep them interested, there is insufficient
connection with local ethnicities and cultures and finally, there is a lack of
relevance in the music curriculum (Hope, 2004 via Isbell 2). Some music teachers may say that
students hear the popular music all the time, so it is our job to expose them
to music that is not commonly heard on the radio, or in their daily life, but
elementary general music teachers can use popular music to augment their
standing Kodály-centered music curriculum in ways that teach musical concepts
while fostering the joy of music.
In the newly released Ohio Music Standards, there are many content
standards that include popular music. These include 1CE (or creating) for the
seventh grade: Recognize, Identify and demonstrate form in world music (e.g.
Western and Non-western) and popular music and 1RE (or responding) for fifth
grade: Justify personal preferences for certain musical pieces, performances,
composers, and musical genres, both orally and in writing.
This study cites
reasons why popular music can be a great teaching tool and give many examples
from my own classroom and others.
The term popular music is defined for the purpose of this study as the
style of music that students love.
That can be what is deemed “pop”, “underground”, “classic rock”, or
anything else the students may hear in their everyday lives. It is important to know each general
music class because popular music is constantly changing and evolving.
While the quality
of popular music is always in question, as, just like any genres of
contemporary music, it has not had the chance to stand the test of time,
research shows that most students’ prefer listening to contemporary popular
music. According to Minks fifth
graders are eager to “hear the latest cool song, to show off their ownership of
a cool song, or to demonstrate their worldly ways by singing all the words to a
song (Minks 79).” Experts argue
that musical concepts such as beat, tempo, accent, meter, rhythm, ostinato, and
syncopation can be demonstrated using not only the typical folk music or
masterworks, but popular music as well. Mark Biondi, the School of Rock’s
national director of operations states that: “rock [and pop] has shaped and
inspired generations. Music should
move people, emotionally and physically. Rock & Roll does that so
well. You can teach the Rolling
Stones as intensely as you can teach Mozart (Randall 30).” If teachers can use popular music to
introduce a concept and showcase the similarities between popular music and
masterworks, students will be more eager to listen intently and will ultimately
have a better experience in general music class.
As we know,
students often engage in musical experiences outside of class- they listen to
music on the radio and might even sing a popular song at recess. Peter deVries mentions a personal
experience in his article Listen to the Fans in which students are eager to learn the harmony in a Spice Girls song
because they want to perform it just like it is on the recording. This then opened the door for deVries
to introduce other forms of singing in harmony to students such as rounds,
canons, ostinatos, etc (deVries 26).
If teachers investigate their own students’ musical preferences, they
can foster similar experiences in their own classroom. I personally have demonstrated this
concept with the Taylor Swift song, “Safe and Sound”, from the Hunger Games
soundtrack. My students were eager
to come in during recess to learn the harmonies in the song and it opened the
door in general music class to expand on the types of harmonies- both
homophonic and polyphonic, intervallic relationships between notes, etc.
Because music is such a large part of
students’ social identity, it is logical to assume that students’ interest will
be piqued when the musical styles showcased in class are songs taken from their
own current musical experience.
According to Piaget’s theory of knowledge construction: “a child’s
learning is always governed by his or her pre-existing mental maps”.
If a musical experience is a repeated
one, the idea or concept will fit easily into the child’s cognitive structure
so that he or she can maintain mental “equilibrium.”
However, if the experience is different or new, as it
typically is with folk music and master works, the child loses equilibrium, and
must alter his or her cognitive structure to accommodate the new conditions (
http://www.funderstanding.com/v2/educators/piaget/).
Therefore, if students are
familiar with a song, it will be easier to find a musical concept within it and
the corollary is also true- if students are familiar with a concept it will be
easier to locate it within a new song.
Kodály teachers
strive to keep the child’s mind maintaining a mental equilibrium with our
Prepare, Present, Practice stages of teaching. Students always experience a concept many times in different
settings before it is taught. They find the concept in various song literature
using code words. For example-
Tika-tika, jjjq, is often
called “alligator” before it is presented. Students find those four even sounds on one beat, and once
they are proficient, it is presented with a familiar song. When a concept is presented, students
learn the musical name for what they have been preparing and experiencing, and
see what it truly looks like.
Finally, after being presented, the concept is practiced with brand new
literature. Popular music can be
used in all three stages if we ware weaving quality materials into the prepare
and practice stages of learning.
There is a wide
range of types of popular music from current to classic rock, to country, from
the “Top 40” to movie soundtracks.
It is up to the teacher to figure out what popular music works best in
their classroom with each different population of students. Popular music is always changing so new
lessons and ideas can be added year after year. A teacher should try to use a variety of music in a
classroom to show students who are more attracted to the hard rock than country
or Justin Bieber, or those who are movie buffs rather than radio aficionados
that they can learn musical concepts from quality music of any style. A teacher must know their students and
their preferences, which can take a while to learn. One teacher even says that: “Ironically, I found that oldies
were a lot safer to teach than something new. My beginner band liked the [‘60s
garage rock staple] ‘Hang on Sloopy’ much more than my (at that time)
up-to-date Sugar Ray arrangement (Randall 31)!” One way I expedite the process
of learning what students may like to learn about, or listen to, is by having
my students create a “Musical Family Tree.” Students make a family tree in which they list musical
abilities/ preferences of their family members as well as themselves and answer
questions such as: “who is your favorite artist? What type of music do you
prefer?” This gives the teacher a
glimpse into not only what the students have heard, but what their parents and
siblings listen to, and even musical accomplishments of extended relatives who
may have gone to Juilliard or played a concert with Prince. Knowing this information can then lead
to better musical experiences in the general music classroom.
Popular songs are
useful tools for preparing, presenting, and practicing new concepts because, as
MacLachlan states, they are short and repetitive, having simple strophic or
compound strophic form, which is great for comparing with folk songs, ballads,
and art songs. Students can hear
concepts repeated three or four times within a song, and songs can be easily
played again due their short length (Biamonte 75). After a concept is introduced, teachers can easily move to
Classical examples to broaden students’ knowledge and expose them to folk or
classical music that is not typically in a student’s listening repertoire. For example, when teaching the diatonic
scale, teachers can first use the verses of the song “Hallelujah” originally
recorded by Leonard Cohen, but also used in the Movie Shrek which is an ascending scale, or the verses of “Safe
and Sound” from the movie The Hunger Games which is a descending scale from m to s, and then move into the basic
theory behind it using board work, and finally make the connection to art music
using the “Pas de Deux” from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.
Students will be excited to hear music from a beloved movie, and will
then be eager to translate the concept to other musical examples. This idea can again be applied to many
concepts if the teacher is willing to find appropriate music.
This methodology
of first playing a song while listening for ‘active listening’ items, then
reinforcing them on a second listening, moving to the concept removed from the
particular example, and finally finding the concept in other music can be used
for many musical concepts and ideas.
When teaching about the orchestra one can use the song “When I Get You
Alone” by the performer Thicke, which is also covered by the cast of Glee, to
introduce Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Thicke’s song samples the first theme of the first movement
of the symphony almost in its entirety.
Students can listen to all three recordings- Thicke, Glee, and a
traditional orchestral recording- and make connections between all styles- what
instruments are used in each, if any and what are the timbres; are there
differences in the rhythms, melody and form? The song can then be used as a
bridge to move into learning more about the orchestra, or Beethoven, his life,
and more of his music. The same
concept can be applied using the Pink Martini song, “Splendour in the Grass”
which features Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, or even utilizing the Beatles
album called Beatles Go For Baroque in which their music is applied to
Baroque ideas. Teachers can even isolate the use of an orchestral instrument in
a song to expand to instrumental families, timbre, etc. An example of this could be Lady Gaga’s
new song “Edge of Glory” as it features a saxophone solo or “She’s Come Undone”
by Guess Who, which features the jazz flute.
This paper has
examined teaching with songs students are familiar with, making it easier to
teach new musical concepts. So
let’s now look at how Piaget’s theory works the opposite way- when students
know a concept and want to expand their knowledge by locating it within a
familiar song. For example: if students have had adequate time to become
comfortable with a concept, such as time-signatures, a popular song can be used
to reinforce the idea and give the students a reason to think about it again
and be excited about it. In this case, the concept is already in a mental map,
and the popular song helps them get a more clear idea of what that map should
look like. Students learn about time signatures early on, but it is a concept that
is consistently being mentioned, getting more complicated as the students learn
more. Great popular songs with less common time-signatures include: The Clash
song “Rebel Waltz” is in 3/4, Alicia Keys “Fallin’” is in 6/8, and The Beatles
“All You Need is Love” is in 7/4 (or sometimes notated as 4/4-3/4). Many country songs are also in 3/4 or
6/8. Another example is the
reinforcement of the compositional technique of using ostinatos. Using Bruno Mars’ song “Just the Way
You Are” is a great way to show that ostinatos aren’t just a way to add
accompaniment to a folk song, but are used commonly in many types of
music. This song is a great
example as each instrument plays only one rhythmic/melodic the pattern during
the song. The easiest to recognize
is the piano- because it plays for the entire song with no breaks. There are even popular music examples
for teaching modes if your students are that advanced- Steppenwolf’s “Born to
be Wild” chorus is Mixolydian, The Beatles “Norwegian Wood” is in Locrian and
Santana’s “Evil Ways” is Dorian.
As briefly
mentioned above, movie soundtracks are a great way to mix contemporary popular
music into the classroom. We all
know the solfege pattern: s,s,s,
d s fmr d’ s fmr
d’ s fmfr - and can probably sing
it in the correct rhythm on the second try. It is the “Main Theme” from Star Wars. While the oldest of the series is over
30 years old, and newest over 10 years old, almost all students have seen at
least one of the six movies, watch the cartoon, or at least know the tune of
both the “Main Theme” and the “Raiders March”. Using movie soundtrack patterns,
such as the “Main Theme” from Star Wars, for sight-reading will
immediately hook students into the lesson. Familiar theme songs can be used to reinforce many melodic
and rhythmic concepts. See
appendix A for a few more examples of soundtrack Sight-Reading. Soundtracks can teach many other things
as well. Not only can a
class sight-read examples just as you could any other listening example, but
soundtracks can cross the curriculum into literature.
In my 5th
grade General Music classroom, we open our soundtrack unit by sight-reading Star
Wars or another example and then we discuss how the music adds to the plot
of a movie. Continuing the Star
Wars example, we know that the “Raiders March” stands for Darth Vader and
when it plays, bad things are coming.
All movies have some sort of soundtrack in which the music furthers the
plot, explains emotion in ways that dialogue cannot or sets the mood for the
scene. What characteristics of the songs made them fit certain points of the
movie- was it the tempo? The volume? The tonality? Or something else? We look
at Movie Soundtrack composers, such as John Williams or Klaus Badelt, and
discuss how they created the music to fit the time period and the feel of the
movie itself. This can lead to
discussions on jobs in music today, characteristics of music from different
time periods- the music in a movie that takes place in the 1800s would have a
soundtrack to match the style of music from that period, how composers create
music and much more. The
culmination of the unit, after reading many songs, discussing many composers,
current and classical, is for the students to create their own Movie Soundtrack
to go with a book that they have read.
They must look at the plot points and decide what type of music should
be played when. They are
challenged to use a variety of styles of music, and even write one of their own
pieces for the final product. The
students LOVE this project, because it not only teaches them a lot about
musical concepts, but it also ties into their schema of music and literature
they think is important at this point in their life.
As my students are
challenged through the soundtrack project to find music that fits certain
emotions, teachers should also challenge students to find other concepts taught
in class in songs they hear on the radio.
The teacher will teach the concept using traditional folk music and master
works, then ask the students to find another example in music they often listen
to. This concepts works well for
concepts such as chord progressions, scale patterns, rhythms, etc. The class
can then analyze the student-found examples to see if they are correct or
not. This is made easy with new
computer programs like Spotify and I-tunes. There are pros and cons to each of these programs. Spotify
can be used to look up a song and the entire song can be played for free. A
teacher can search artists or keywords and make playlists of commonly used
songs. However, there are ads and one must sign in using Facebook. If you get a
prime membership to Spotify, for a small price, the ads will disappear. With I-tunes, a teacher can play a clip
of any song for free. However, you
never know which section will be played and to hear the whole song, you have to
buy it. Songs on I-tunes range
from $.89 to $1.29, which doesn’t seem expensive, but can add up.
All of the
examples above use popular music as an area of student interest to bridge to
other concepts. Popular music can
also be used as a stand-alone teacher of musical concepts. While some schools have separate
classes based solely on popular music, this is not an option in most elementary
schools. To expand on popular music’s uses in the classroom, one can also use
popular music to teach standards such as “listening to, analyzing, and
describing a piece of music using music vocabulary” and “evaluating and
describing individual and group performances.” Listening to current performances utilizing websites such as
YouTube or Teacher Tube, or television shows like American Idol, Glee,
X-Factor, or The Voice we can help students move past the typical “I liked it”
responses and into making a more critical evaluation of the music by comparing
and contrasting vocal timbres, connecting styles to history, evaluating if the
instrumentation complements the vocals or is competing with it, etc. Using these videos can also help
develop a students’ awareness of performance etiquette, and gives teachers an
opportunity to also discuss things such as: teamwork, during the battle
episodes in The Voice or group numbers in both The Voice and American
Idol; cooperation, which is shown by all performers working together- band,
vocalist, lighting crew, etc. and hard work, by showing the performers
preparing throughout the week prior to the performance.
Now, some may say
that Pop or Rock Music is damaging to the health of youth, or that school time
should not be spent on popular music, or that music teachers are not trained in
pop or rock, or that it encourages rebelliousness and anti-educational
behavior. However, even as these arguments are put out by many and outlined by
Campbell and Herbert, they came to the conclusion that “popular music may be
among the most powerful discourses available to students as a means by which to
construct personal identity and interpret social experience (Campbell and
Herbert 19 via Isbell 3).” True,
when listening to the radio, most students- and teachers- are not listening for
solfege patterns or known rhythms: they are listening for something that makes
them feel good, or forget about their hard day- using music almost as an escape
from reality. When students talk about a favorite song, they often state that
the song has a strong backbeat, or that it is fun to dance to as reasons to
support their choice, but this just makes it a better tool for music classroom
discussion. Why do we enjoy the
music that we do? Is it because of the compositional techniques? The lyrics?
The melody or harmony or bass line?
This year, on the last day of school, students in my 6th
grade General Music classes were allowed to bring in their favorite, school
appropriate, songs. We ended up
having an awesome discussion about how a lot of music today is too “trashy”. We then were able to use that as a
springboard into a discussion about what makes good lyrics? We also discussed how much of the
popular music on the radio is very repetitive- there are not a lot of chordal
or melodic changes, but what is there is catchy. All of these conversations can relate to popular music, and
can then be transferred to other types of music as well. It can lead to discussion about why
some music remains important for hundreds of years while other songs disappear
after just a few weeks on the charts.
One final way
popular music can be used is to teach across the curriculum. Songs such as Michael Jackson’s “Man in
the Mirror” and “We are the World” or Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, which
was covered more recently by the Counting Crows, can be used to teach students
about environmental or world issues.
American Idol frequently has theme nights where music of one artist or
decade is featured. These and countless other songs and music shows can give
insight into history, social issues, and many other subjects.
Using popular
music does not mean that a teacher should, or even could, fully abandon other
more traditional genres used for teaching music. Folk music plays a very
important role in teaching music literacy and gives students a connection to
their past that they may not have had if it were not in their weekly
class. However, popular music is a
useful tool in the music classroom as it bridges the gap between students’
everyday musical experiences and the folk music and masterworks that are best
suited for teaching many musical concepts. Ultimately, this combined music
experience would give the students a well-rounded, well-balanced musical
education.
