Organized Chaos

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Current Musicians of Color for Black History Month and Beyond (Part 2)

In celebration of Black History Month, I'm sharing more current musicians of color that I like to use in my classroom. These are artists who are currently active and have school-appropriate music- in fact many of these artists have created music specifically for the classroom. These are also lesser-known artists who you may not have heard of before- I hope you'll find a new song or artist to share with your students this month and all year long.

My goal in including these songs and artists in my lessons is to provide students with more role models, and to "normalize" musicians of color. If the only time students see people of color represented in the classroom is in February, or only when you talk about Jazz or spirituals, it limits their understanding of the contributions people of color have made to the world of music, and the contributions that they themselves can make.

1. Desmond Dennis

2. Resound

3. Asia Monet

4. Griot B

5. Ms. Niki

6. Black Violin

7. Our Native Daughters/ Rhiannon Giddens

I know there are plenty of other musicians that could be mentioned here, particularly more well-known ones, but my hope is to share some artists you may not have heard of before. I'd love to hear what other names you would add to the list- share them in the comments below! If you want to see more musicians that I shared last year for Black History Month, here is that post:

To read more about how we can all better respect, reflect, and respond to students of color in our music classrooms all year long, check out these posts:

Although Black History Month is a great opportunity to focus our attention on better representing people of color in our classrooms, it's important for this not to be a one-month change but rather be the impetus for lasting improvement!

Monday, February 4, 2019

January Favorites 2019

It's crazy to be typing "2019"- one month already gone in the new year! January is always a busy month in my house- here are some highlights from last month as told by pictures from my Instagram photos!

1. Birthdays

One of the biggest reasons January is busy for me is because of all the birthdays! Besides a few friends who have birthdays this month, my daughters and my mom both have January birthdays. This year my mother turned 60, so we had some extra planning for that, and I loved hosting my daughters' bug-themed party. Each year the girls pick out a theme and we figure out snacks and activities to go with it. It's so much fun to see how creative they get, making up their own games and coming up with fun snack ideas :) Busy but fun!

2. Hip-Hop Unit

I am partnering with a local hip-hop artist to take my 6th graders through a class project creating their own hip-hop song and recording it. This has definitely been a new adventure for me in so many ways, but an important one, and I am learning a lot as I go (as are the students!). The books in the picture above are not for the 6th grade unit specifically, but I also ordered these books for my classroom library to add more variety to my book selections, and I'm so happy with these!

3. Planner Updates

If you've been around these parts for a while you'll know that I start working on next school year's planners in January. I've gotten several great suggestions from members of my Facebook Planner Collaborative group- if you want to have input into the 2019-2020 planner updates, or just want to hang out with other planner lovers, come join us! For anyone who owns one of my planners, the free updates should be available by May, so stay tuned...

4. Music Education Articles

I always round up my favorite finds from the month in music education blogger world- click on the pictures below to read each of these awesome posts! I share these each week over on my Facebook page, so follow me there if you want to stay up to date on all my favorite posts :)

I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane, and best wishes on a wonderful February ahead!

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Pop Songs for Elementary Choir: Finding the Right Song

For the last 6 years, I have been incorporating at least one "pop" song into my 5th and 6th grade choir's performances at every concert. I have found it to be a great practice for so many reasons, and over the years I have learned how to make it work most successfully for my students. Last week I shared the benefits I see for incorporating pop music in choir literature, as well as how I take a pop song and make it work in a choral setting- you can catch up on that post here. Today I want to share how I find and choose songs that will be successful and effective with my elementary choirs, and give you some examples of songs I have used over the years.

1. The best pop songs for choir

One of the biggest challenges to incorporating pop music in elementary choir, of course, is finding the right song. My criteria in selecting a pop song to use with my choir are:

Age-appropriate material: Obviously one of the first things I consider is the lyrical content. But besides vulgar language and "adult themes", I also tend to steer away from most "love song" material (no matter how tame or wholesome it may be). One of the goals I have for my students in learning pop songs is to work on expressive performance. I am not comfortable (nor are my students!) asking them to sing expressively about romantic love at this age! Unfortunately this makes up a giant portion of pop music, so having this criteria definitely makes my life more difficult (but I think it's worth it). Ideally, I look for songs with a truly powerful and meaningful message that my students can connect with.
Melodic and harmonic content: Of course the song needs to be in an age-appropriate range and be singable in an choral setting! Often if a song meets every other criteria on my list I can get around this one with the way I arrange the song (see my previous post for some examples of how I do this), but some songs just cannot be arranged for elementary voices without making the song unrecognizable.
Diverse sources: If you've been reading my blog this school year you know that I am very focused on inclusive, anti-oppressive teaching. A big part of this is representation, which includes the artists whose work I use in my teaching. As much as possible, I have tried to incorporate artists of color when choosing my songs (including the performers and the composers), as well as drawing from different styles/ genres within current popular music.
Current: Most of the time I choose songs that were released within the last year. I find that songs from 2-5 years ago generally get a lukewarm response from students- they tend to think that I'm trying too hard to be cool but am actually out of touch with current trends ;) The occasional exception to this rule is when I've done a "standard" from decades ago. When I do that, I usually explain to students that we're doing it more for their parents' benefit, which they seem willing to accept!

2. Sources for finding songs

Another challenge with incorporating pop music is you can't pick out a few songs that work well and then keep using them or they will be outdated! Over my years of using pop songs with elementary choir I have found some go-to ways of searching out new songs that will work well:

Students: The best way to find out what students are interested in and stay current on what they are listening to is to ask the students themselves! I will admit I don't often end up using the exact songs they suggest because they don't understand the criteria I need to consider for choral settings, but I often discover artists or sources (like radio stations or specific styles) that I can draw from.
TV and movies: I've found a lot of great songs that have the content I'm looking for by looking at music made for the TV shows and movies my students are watching. While there are still romantic themes in some of them, there is usually a lot more diversity in the topics they cover and a lot more age-appropriate.
Radio: I've written an entire post about this, but to stay on top of what is current there's really no substitute for listening to the radio! And I've found it's important to find out what stations the students are listening to. In my case the majority of my students are not listening to "top 40" radio- I have 3 different stations saved in my car radio now that different students listen to most often that I try to tune into whenever I can.
PS22: If I'm really struggling to come up with song ideas, I'll go to the PS22 chorus YouTube channel and see what they've been up to lately! They do pop songs almost exclusively and I'll often find inspiration from their song selections. They are also a great source for getting ideas for how to arrange the songs!

3. Song examples

Of course I don't recommend necessarily using these specific songs because this list will quickly become outdated, but hopefully this will help give you some ideas of the types of songs and artists that I have found work well with my elementary choir! This list starts with my most recent song selections and goes back to when I first started using pop songs years ago- you'll see that there are a few older songs thrown in there, but most of them were released within the year we performed them.

If you haven't already, be sure to go back and read last week's post on why I use pop songs with my elementary choir, and how I arrange the songs to make them work in a choral setting. What are your thoughts on using pop music in elementary choir? What are some songs you have used that have worked well with your chorus groups? Share your questions, ideas, and suggestions in the comments below!

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Pop Songs for Elementary Choir: Why and How?

1. Benefits of pop songs for choir

I know there is some disagreement over the merit of including pop music in choral literature, so let's start with the WHY. Here are some of the reasons I decided to incorporate pop music initially, and the benefits I have seen that convince me to continue doing so:

Engagement: I readily admit this was the #1 reason I started looking for ways to include pop music initially. I have two pull-out/ optional choirs at my current school: one for 3rd and 4th grade, and one for 5th and 6th grade. I found that there was a significant drop off in interest/ enrollment in the upper grades, because many felt they had already "been there, done that". I save the pop songs for my 5th and 6th grade choir, which gives them something to look forward to and helps the class feel different from what they did in 3rd and 4th grade.
Parallel Harmony: This is a natural way to work on students' ability to learn and perform parallel harmony parts by ear. Because many of them are familiar with the song already, many students find it easier to hear the chords/ harmony lines. For students who are just starting to learn to sing parallel harmony, this is an excellent entry point!
Solo Opportunities: One of the other ways I distinguish my upper grades choir from the lower grades choir is by offering opportunities for solos only in the upper grades. Pop songs are usually where these solos are included, and they are a natural place to include them! I find students are generally more eager to audition for these solo parts as well, because they are more confident on the pop songs and because there is an increased "cool factor".
Singing Styles: Different genres call for different styles of singing, and including pop songs in our choral literature provides an opportunity to work on a more pop-style of singing. I find including this style in what we learn makes it easier to encourage students to then practice singing in a more traditionally choral/ art music style as well, and in truth, the majority of my students are more likely to find use for pop-style singing in their adult lives anyway!
Expression: Pop music (if chosen properly) is one of the best ways to get students this age to work on expressive performance and communicating a message through their song. The right pop song can connect with students' emotions in a way that few art songs/ traditional choral pieces can, so this is a great opportunity to work on communicating those emotions and messages through their performance.

2. Arranging pop songs for choir

Obviously transferring a solo song to a choral setting requires some arranging! Here are some things that I find myself doing most often to make a song most appropriate for an elementary choir:

Parallel Harmony: I tend to add a harmony line on the chorus and keep the verses in unison. Sometimes there will be section(s) that already have a harmony singing part in the original recording- sometimes I use the same lines, but often I don't. My main consideration of course is vocal range, so I often end up adding my own harmony line.
Simplified Runs: Over the years of doing this I've moved more and more away from simplifying rhythms and melodic lines too much in an effort to make it more "choral"- I find students think it sounds too childish, and often end up more confused anyway- but I do find ways to simplify or remove vocal runs and ornamental notes. Sometimes I do this by making a section with lots of runs into a solo, removing the line altogether, or simplifying the line.
Include Solos: My standard formula tends to be to have everyone sing the first verse in unison, sing the chorus in parts, and then make the subsequent verses (and sometimes other sections like a bridge) into solos or small ensembles.
Partner Singing: Obviously this doesn't work in many songs, but there have been a few times when a song will have 2 sections with the same chord progressions that work together well so I can have them sing the two sections as a partner song. It is a great way to increase the difficulty, add some musical interest if a section is repeated a lot in a song, and incorporate more choral skill-building!
Remove Sections: Sometimes there will be just one section of the song that doesn't work for elementary choir for one reason or another. In that case I have sometimes removed the section altogether or replaced it with another one from a different part of the song.
Accompaniment: Sometimes there is a great arrangement already written for choir, but I rarely use those- I find these arrangements usually take out too much of the stylistic elements and defeat the purpose of including pop music in the first place! I am often able to get "karaoke" tracks to use, or depending on the song, I have also been lucky enough to have live instrumentalists play with the choir sometimes as well.

You can read about my criteria for selecting pop songs, how I find them, as well as some examples of songs I have used successfully in the past few years in this follow-up post. For now I'd love to know: what are your thoughts on using pop songs with elementary choir? Have you ever done pop songs with your own choirs? What questions, ideas, and suggestions do you have? I'd love to hear from you and chat with you in the comments below.

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