Music In Our Schools Month® 2022: "Sound of My Heart" Song Bracket

This year the theme for Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM®) is the same as last year: "Music: The Sound of My Heart". I have been doing a "musical March madness"-style song bracket, where students listen to different songs each day and vote on their favorites, for several years now, and last year's bracket focused on songs from various genres with the word "love" in the title (it was a huge success- see last year's bracket here if you haven't seen it yet). Although the theme is the same I wanted to do something different for our song bracket, and I'm really excited about the new direction I'll be taking!

As I did last year, I'm going to be setting up google slides files with the songs for each day embedded in the slides so that classes can vote in their homerooms. If you want to see how I organize the logistics so classes can vote every day regardless of whether they have music that day or not, check out last year's post (and definitely let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to help). Doing it in slides was such an easy way to have all the songs organized and make it easy for the homeroom teachers to report their class' vote rather than having to email me every day!

I wanted to change up the music, though, while still tying into the theme. So this year I chose all instrumental music that evoke a broad spectrum of moods, and I'm asking students to vote on which song "speaks to their heart" more. I'm also tying this into our social-emotional learning curriculum and giving homeroom teachers some options for discussing the emotions of the music with their students if they have the time/ want to tie it in (you can see those in the slides linked below). I'm really excited about this because it has definitely been an emotionally turbulent time these last few months especially! Here are the songs I'll be using this year (in no particular order):

Closer Today by Bastien Slice

Theme from Schindler’s List by John Williams

In the Mood by Glenn Miller

Prashanti by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass

Capricho arabe by Francisco Tarrega

Soraboshi by Luyifei

Moonlight Sonata (3rd movement) arr. Viossy, comp. Beethoven

Dark Moon by Purple Cat

Frog Hop by Tuba Skinny

Time from Inception by Hans Zimmer

Wheels by Andrew Huang

Charleston by Sam Levine

Whirl-Y-Reel 1 by Afro Celt Sound System

Defeated Clown from Joker by Hildur Guðnadóttir

Descarga De Hoy by Cubanismo

Tamasha by Khumariyaan

Mahler Symphony 2 (Brass Excerpt)

One Summer’s Day from Spirited Away by Joe Hisaishi

Drumming with Youssouf Koumbassa, Bolokada Conde, Mamady Wadaba Kourouma,  Babara Bangoura, and Abou Mohamed Camara

Ozymandias by Turrim Aurea

Rollin’ by The Rebirth Brass Band

Si Naani by Toumani Diabaté

Nightsky by Tracey Chattaway

Cooleys's / The Dawn / The Mullingar Races by The Dubliners

I don't own the rights to the songs themselves so the music is not embedded but if you'd like a copy of the slide images you can click the picture below to make a copy for your own drive. 

I'm excited to see how the students respond to this year's playlist, and I'm curious to see which song wins out in the end! I'm hopeful that this year's theme will put the focus on the musicality of the selections over the artists or the lyrics, which I think will be different from previous years.

What are your plans for Music In Our Schools Month® this year? What are your favorite instrumental pieces? Share your ideas in the comments below. If you're looking for more ideas to use for MIOSM, here are all my posts on the topic.