Musicing

This evening I showed my 8-year-old son how to play Down Down Baby. (Down down baby, down by the roller coaster. Sweet sweet baby I don’t wanna let you go. Shimmy shimmy cocao pop, shimmy shimmy round. Shimmy shimmy cocao pop, shimmy shimmy break down. Two big kids sittin on a fence tryin to make […]

Yesterday in Elementary Music Methods class we learned the Virginia Reel and the Patty-Cake Polka. Then we discussed the educational outcomes for elementary students of participating in these dances. Here’s what the prospective elementary classroom teachers came up with:
Social: working together, learning about each other, interaction, communication, learning about personal space and appropriate touching, following […]

We had a general music workshop with Susan Kenney here at Northwest Missouri State University last Saturday. She is a wonderful clinician and a delightful person. She taught some singing games, demonstrated some listening maps, and presented information about the brain. I agree with her that “whole song” or “whole-part” is the best approach to […]

I love to see the smiles on my students’ faces as they participate in singing games and rhythm activities the first day of the semester. The elementary education majors especially come to class worried that it will be a regular stuffy class where you’re supposed to prefer some kinds of musics and musicings over others […]

I love the New England Dancing Masters books of singing games, Down in the Valley and Jump Jim Joe; they have wonderful accompaniments, the songs are down to earth, complex, and they swing. So, kids really love these games! I used Mary Helen Richard’s Let’s Do It Again! from ETM for 12 years as a […]

Evan Tobias included a link to the following petition on his blog. I also heard a lot about this at MMEA. As with many other things with musicing and education, I have mixed feelings. I love the idea of a music education for all children, but I have some major problems with this document (no […]

John Kratus was a guest at our Missouri Music Educators Association annual conference. He gave outstanding presentations on Music Education at the Tipping Point (like his MEJ article) and on teaching song-writing classes. I agree (and have written about it before in this blog) that music education in the U.S. needs to adapt to the […]

It’s been an eventful summer with family trips to the desert, the beach, the mountains, and back to the beautiful (and I really mean it) rolling hills of Northwest Missouri. Towards the beginning of the summer I took a flight out to Boston for the twentieth Mayday Colloquium (my third). We had some great presentations […]

Happy MayDay! I was just thinking of the MayDay Group today. For anyone reading this, it’s a group of/for critical theorists in music education. I learned about the group from my mentor, the late Steve Paul, during my doctoral studies at the University of Arizona. I have since chatted with a number of the group […]

We need an elementary and middle school music method that reflects the rich and complex American musical heritage without making it subordinate to elite European classical traditions. I am envisioning a method with American Roots Musicing and American Popular Musicing at the heart of instruction. Students might choose to explore elite European classical music, but […]