Popular Music and Informal
Pedagogy in Music Education
Joseph Abramo, Ed. D.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Music Education
Neag School of Education
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT
joseph.abramo@uconn.edu
@joseph_abramo
Colloquium on Assessment,
Neag School of Education
Overview
• Why popular music?
• An educator’s definition of popular music
• Composing and Creating Popular Music
• Student Examples
• Guidelines and suggestions for implementing this into various
classrooms
• Listening to, watching, and analyzing popular music.
• Dilemmas and questions with popular music in schools
• Questions and Discussion
How do people experience
music?
http://www.statista.com/statistics/188910/us-music-album-sales-by-genre-2010/
Three questions teachers must ask
themselves:
• What characterizes the world my students inhabit
everyday?
• Am I educating them to intelligently maneuver the
musical aspects of that world?
• Am I using that world to the best of my ability to
accomplish my curricular goals?
Student-Centered
What is the “philosophy” behind
teaching popular music
• Christopher Small
• Music is not a noun but a verb
• Musicking
• “Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something
people do. The apparent thing “music” is a figment,
an abstraction of the action, whose reality vanishes as
soon as we examine it at all closely” (p. 2).
What is the “philosophy” behind
teaching popular music
• From Christopher Small’s perspective, popular music
is not what it sounds like, but how people make music.
What is the “philosophy” behind
teaching popular music
• Lucy Green has documented profound differences between the
processes of classical and popular musicians. Popular Musicians:
• learn music aurally as opposed to through notation,
• build technique through the practice and performance of songs
rather than scales and exercises,
• understand music through metaphor,
• the time they devote to practice was malleable and only done if
they consider it fun.
• learn music from copying recordings and being “encultured,” or
immersed in that musical culture and learning from family and
peers.
What is the “philosophy” behind
teaching popular music
• Randall Allsup studied the practices of classical and
popular musicians and how composing in small groups
affected process and the formation of community.
• He found that the style of music the students chose to write
in had a direct affect on how they worked together.
• One group he studied chose to write classical music and
ended up working as isolated individuals. After spending
large amounts of time through this process, with little to
show for it, they switched to writing jazz and rock, worked
collaboratively and thus increased their input.
What do these studies tell
us?
• What defines popular music is the process.
• The popular music process is different than the
processes in classical settings and schools.
• Students are more productive when they work in
groups than when they work as individuals.
• Genre has an influence on how students work
together.
Dot, Dot, Dot
• Beginning process of composing the song
•
•
•
•
How do students communicate with each other?
How do students generate ideas?
How do students reflect on their music?
What’s the role of the teacher? Transcript
• The finished product
• Form
• Arrangement
• Lyrics
Form of Dot, Dot, Dot
Hear the piece and see the score
Dot, Dot, Dot Lyrics
Verse 1
Oh Baby don’t bother
Cause I don’t want to know
And Honey you are crazy
If you think I’ll let you go
I just heard “Sweetie you’re not…”
A-a-a-nything can come after the dot dot dot
Chorus
Flipped the mattress but the sheets weren’t
changed
Feels like something’s different but it’s still all
the same
You think that I’m dramatic but I blow you
away
They saw that we won’t make it when we’re
really ok.
We might be kind of pointless but you sure
mean a lot
But when I’m in your arms you know that I’m
all you got.
Verse 2
and Baby don’t bother
Cause you’re making a fuss
And Honey you’re crazy
If you think it’s about trust
I just heard “Sweetie you’re not…”
A-a-a-nything can come after the dot dot dot
Chorus
Chorsey breaky thing
Keep it Keep it
only to find that when your
Secrets Secrets
sound just like mine, you’ll see the
Regret Regret
in the whole time to show I
Mean it Mean it
that we’ll be fine
Jam #12
• Beginning process of composing the song
•
•
•
•
How do students communicate with each other?
How do students generate ideas?
How do students reflect on their music?
What’s the role of the teacher? Transcript
• The finished product
• Form
• Lyrics
Form of Jam #12
Hear the piece and watch the score
Jam #12 Lyrics
Presidential race 2008
Civilized culture and still the world is filled with hate
Corporate sellouts always promising change
How much does it cost to buy a candidate?
Chorus
This can’t go on any longer
It’s our nation make it stronger
The heart is black and the money is green
Fighting wars for profit fueled by greed
Major news stations, always they decide
Who’s in the spotlight and who’s forced to hide
The truest Americans, the honest candidates
They ain’t even allowed in the televised debates
Gender and Popular Music
• My research suggests that there are difference
between the ways boys and girls create music
• Girls compartmentalize their talking and playing
• Boys work in a constant wash of sound
• Girls tend to talk more than boys
• This mirrors research on play
Gender and Popular Music
• Lyrics
• Girls tend to write about relationships
• Boys write about “bigger” issues than personal, like
politics
• Both ways of creating music are legitimate.
• The point of this research is not to change students
but to be inclusive of different ways students might
solve musical tasks.
Let it Be Rap
Yo my click bleep now like 12 from the apostles [???]
And bust down bottles and bust down tahoes. [???]
Jewels, Fros, look like we hit the lotto
P89 my clip filled with hallows
Stuck in the club we all hit with bottles
Don’t speak now if your neck don’t swallow
‘Cause 50 [Cent] pushed Bentleys and [Dr.] Dre pushed Diablos
And Eminem got cash in my escrow [??? probably not]
I’ve got G unit dickies, G unit velours, G unit tank top, G unit drawers
Now I’m moving product at the G unit stores
And [???] G unit Floor
When they’re hot they like to screw you
Remember this, I got more control over your life than you do.
I said, Red heads all up in your [???] everybody aiming for your [???]
What do we do about
this?...
• Were these lyrics inappropriate?
• Teacher needs to know “what’s going on.”
• How do we take care of these things without
squashing creativity?
What can we gather these
songs?
• Writing popular music is extremely personal
• It is not fluff: it can deal with issues like politics, and
can be poetic
• Is not “cookie-cutter” composing; students can
explore and use different forms, harmonies, etc.
• Teachers need to be “in the know.”
How to make this happen
• Allsup and Baxter
• Ask open, guided, and closed questions
• Open: what are we going to compose today?
• Guided: in what ways can we express an emotion?
• Closed: should we use G major or C major here?
How to make this happen
• Do not compose with overly specific goals
• Don’t specify the number of measures
• Don’t make them focus on one element of music
• If can be avoided, don’t give them a chord progression
• Instead compose for the reasons composer compose:
to create music. From what the students give you,
create concepts.
Helpful strategies to facilitate a
creative popular music composition
experience
• Questions?
• Time for a break?
Listening to, Watching and Analyzing
Popular Music
• What is popular music good for.
• Rap teaches the Scottish Snap!
• Hip Hop Harry
• Don’t Bait and Switch
• Popular music has merit on its own
Cultural Studies
• Music as Text
• Music and other texts are polysemic (have multiple
meanings).
Cultural Studies
• Hall, S. (1980 [1973]). Encoding/decoding. Culture,
Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies,
1972-79 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
(Ed.): London: Hutchinson, pp. 128-38.
• Readings:
• Dominant
• Oppositional
• Negotiated
Imagine
• John Lennon
• A Perfect Circle
Run The World (Girls), by
Beyonce
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBmMU_iwe6U
&safe=active
Dominant Reading: Female
Empowerment
I'm reppin' for the girls who taking over the world
Help me raise a glass for the college grads
This goes out to all my girls
That's in the club rocking the latest
Who will buy it for themselves and get more money later
I'm reppin' for the girls who taking over the world
Help me raise a glass for the college grads
Boy I know you love it
How we're smart enough to make these millions
Strong enough to bear the children
Then get back to business
Dominant Reading: Female
Empowerment
Oppositional Reading:
Women's Objectification
My persuasion can build a nation
Endless power
With our love we can devour
You'll do anything for me
Oppositional Reading:
Women's Objectification
• Macklemore: Wings
Issues
• What constitutes a “dominant” reading? How do we
know it is dominant?
Dilemmas
• This work is political (but not Political or partisan)
• You are inviting in controversial issues
• But English teachers do this all the time (i.e. Catcher in the
Rye)
• This is harder than relying on the notes alone
• Harlem Shake
• Harlem reacts to the Harlem Shake
Summary
• Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated Readings
allow students both to critically examine and celebrate
popular culture. By reading through lenses, it allows
distance between them and the text, and allows them
to not take critique of “their” music personally.
Summary
• Popular Music can accomplish traditional and
established goals in music education:
• It can be used to compose and let students be creative.
When doing this teachers should start open and close
parameters only when needed, using open, guided, and
then closed questions.
• By using dominant, oppositional, and negotiated
readings, teachers can ask students to question to
interpret music and videos, making connections to
sociological questions, and coming to multiple
interpretations and conclusions.
Questions and discussion
Works Cited
• Abramo, J. M. (2011). Queering informal pedagogy: Sexuality
and popular music in the schools. Music Education Research, 13(4),
447-459.
• Abramo, J. M. (2011). Gender differences of popular music
production in secondary schools. Journal of Research in Music
Education, 59(1), 21-43.
• Abramo, J. (2011). Gender differences in the popular music
compositions of
high school students. Music Education
Research International, 5, 1-11.
• Allsup, R. E. (2003a). Mutual learning and democratic action in
instrumental music education. Journal of Research in Music
Education, (51)1, 24-37.
Works Cited
• Green, L. (2002). How popular musicians learn: A way ahead
for music education. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
• Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A
new classroom pedagogy. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
• Hall, S. (1980 [1973]). Encoding/decoding. Culture, Media,
Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Ed.): London:
Hutchinson, pp. 128-38.
• Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performance and
listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.