Culture- This group is a perfect example of how we can accurately celebrate other cultures. This group regularly puts on performances and classes that are culturally accurate. What a great experience this would be to take students on a field trip to.
Instrumentation- African Percussion Ensemble
As I was looking for a piece to discuss in this weeks entry, I came across this video of the Kissidugu ensemble and immediately became interested. After doing some research and reading comments listed on the video, it was very clear that this group is putting on performances and teaching classes that are an accurate depiction of their original culture.
As music educators, we are going to want to teach the music of many cultures, but may not be able to perform them all at a high level. Groups such as this one present a special opportunity to bring a culture bearer into our classrooms so they can share their expertise to students. We should not be ashamed that others are more familiar with cultures we are teaching, but we should embrace them and learn as much as possible to help educate others later on in life.
You are very right with your thought of bringing in experts to teach what they know more than you do. Both of my winter partnerships, both teachers had my play Tuba for the students knowing that this was probably the only chance of them having a semi-professional level tuba player that can showcase the instrument past stereotypes and preconceived notions. And also, when you bring in an expert on a subject, the students will remember that day more than if you just decided to teach that subject because it introduces something different into the classroom. Bringing in someone like a culture bearer is something new and exciting like a an assembly or a performance, and so I feel like it'd almost be better in a way for me to find people that can teach world musics as experts rather than try myself without the extensive experience.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points about the importance of culture bearers. Hopefully, we will have some in our classroom soon!
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