What a fantastic Winter Conference! I was inspired not just by the quality of the sessions but also by the presence of our membership and the cohesion of the Bay Section Board. A huge thank you to San Jose State and Dr. Harris and Dr. Hollinger and her students in particular for hosting the Conference and for all their hard work.

The Kitka session was one of the first sessions in the morning on Friday. The voices of the three women Janet Kutulis, Juliana Graffagna and Natalia Ukrainska filled the room with an amazing sound! Kitka is a nine-woman ensemble based in Oakland that specializes in women’s vocal music from eastern Europe. They began in 1979 as an amateur ensemble and conduct vocal workshops, community service activities, in-school programs, broadcasts, recording and publication
projects, master artist residencies and comissioning programs. They tour regionally, nationally and internationally and have an extensive recording library. In the session, they taught the participants how to sing a Russian folk song as well as to dance to the same melody. Janet described the different vocal techniques to sing the Russian folksongs. It was a fun session and I wish it had been longer.

Jim Munzenrider, a local specialist on steel drum music, brought his students from Nueva School in Hillsborough, to demonstrate different styles of steel drum music. I was particularly impressed by the level of complexity of the music. It seemed to be a music of movement patterns as each of the students learned to negotiate the different landscapes of each of their drums. Steel drumming is not a standardized art form. Each pan maker makes the drums to his own formula. The music is learned by rote and entire symphonies are learned four bars at a time!

As I watched the sessions, I began to think of the ways we educators engage our students in our classes. The students today want to learn the music that they hear in the world around them. The growth of folk music, fiddling, bluegrass, jazz, rock, mariachi, steel drums, gospel, eastern European folk music has been exponential in recent years. Our responsibility as music educators is to explore different styles of music with our students. According to the American Federation of Musicians, 110,00 of its membership perform all styles of music: alternative rock, hip-hop, jazz, country, folk, rock, big band, gospel, reggae, Christian rock and classical. The world is getting smaller especially with the rise of the internet as a form of communication and information. We can explore other cultures through its music and begin a journey towards a more global understanding. Check out sites like the World Music Store http://www.worldmusicstore.com/ and Smithsonian Global Sound at: http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org. In Santa Clara County alone, there are numerous multicultural arts organizations that could serve as resources for educators. They can be found at http://www.artsopolis.com/org/listing. Every cultural group found in the Bay Area has its own an arts or cultural organization. Arts Council Silicon Valley is also a tremendous resource and point of contact for groups in your area.

We’re in the second semester of the teaching year. I hope the Winter Conference gave you an infusion of new ideas and new ways of thinking! Best wishes for continued success as you navigate your way through Spring.

Welcome to the second issue of Bay Section’s Tempo! I am grateful to be a member of the Board in this capacity because the study of the world’s music as a part of the music curriculum is an important topic to me, especially in a world that is increasingly getting smaller and smaller. California schools are among the most diverse in the United States. Our curriculums in music should reflect this diversity in a meaningful way.

I am sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta while attending a training workshop for teaching International Baccalaureate Music. The mission of the International Baccalaureate program is ‘to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. The IB program includes music as part of the sixth category (the arts) in a curriculum of science, math, a second language, economics. In fact the curriculum makes a point to include ‘world music’ as a basis for comparison of Western music: students will ‘explore and value the diversity of arts across time, place and cultures’. Interestingly, the IB Music design aligns very nicely with the National Standards of Music as well. There is composition, music theory, music history, the study of music in relation to society and culture as well as a mandatory requirement of membership in a vocal or instrumental ensemble. The IB Music exam requires each student to analyze two distinct musics in a component called ‘musical investigations, allowing for the IB Music student to listen to and describe music as well as to understand music’s place in a social and historical context. The students are both internally assessed (by the teacher) and externally assessed by an evaluator of international standing.

The reason I include the tenets of the IB program in this article is to underline the ease with which a more multicultural approach can be included in your lesson planning. In programming any non-Western music, take some time to investigate its historical and cultural context. Is there a group locally who can visit your classroom to give a concert of the particular music? Do you have students who might act as a resource? I have had students who either played in a community group or who had relatives who played in a community or professional group.

The 2008 CMEA Bay Section Winter Conference will highlight several Multicultural sessions including an Eastern European women’s vocal ensemble, a steel drum band and a son jarocho ensemble. Look to the next issue for more details!

Welcome to the second issue of Bay Section’s Tempo! I am grateful to be a member of the Board in this capacity because the study of the world’s music as a part of the music curriculum is an important topic to me, especially in a world that is increasingly getting smaller and smaller. California schools are among the most diverse in the United States. Our curriculums in music should reflect this diversity in a meaningful way.

I am sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta while attending a training workshop for teaching International Baccalaureate Music. The mission of the International Baccalaureate program is ‘to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. The IB program includes music as part of the sixth category (the arts) in a curriculum of science, math, a second language, economics. In fact the curriculum makes a point to include ‘world music’ as a basis for comparison of Western music: students will ‘explore and value the diversity of arts across time, place and cultures’. Interestingly, the IB Music design aligns very nicely with the National Standards of Music as well. There is composition, music theory, music history, the study of music in relation to society and culture as well as a mandatory requirement of membership in a vocal or instrumental ensemble. The IB Music exam requires each student to analyze two distinct musics in a component called ‘musical investigations, allowing for the IB Music student to listen to and describe music as well as to understand music’s place in a social and historical context. The students are both internally assessed (by the teacher) and externally assessed by an evaluator of international standing.

The reason I include the tenets of the IB program in this article is to underline the ease with which a more multicultural approach can be included in your lesson planning. In programming any non-Western music, take some time to investigate its historical and cultural context. Is there a group locally who can visit your classroom to give a concert of the particular music? Do you have students who might act as a resource? I have had students who either played in a community group or who had relatives who played in a community or professional group.

The 2008 CMEA Bay Section Winter Conference will highlight several Multicultural sessions including an Eastern European women’s vocal ensemble, a steel drum band and a son jarocho ensemble. Look to the next issue for more details!

Welcome back to a new year! My name is Sofi a Fojas and I am the new Multicultural Representative on the CMEA Bay Section Board. Incidentally, my Bachelor’s degree is in Anthropology, the study of cultures, and I am excited to be in this position! I have taught mariachi in the public schools for several years and have many years’ experience as a classically trained violinist and violist. I have been both an Area Representative and Orchestra Representative as well. It is an honor to be a member of such a dedicated group of music teachers again!

Why is so important to shine a spotlight on non-Classical music? Well, for one thing, the State Board of the California Music Educators’ Association has a multicultural representative and it seemed important to serve in the same capacity in one of the most culturally diverse areas of California, if not the United States. I hope to work closely with other board members to highlight some of the music found amongst the diff erent cultures of our student populations. So many of our schools don’t provide general music classes in the elementary grades in which music of other cultures is usually explored. The ‘alternative music’ movement has gained great momentum in the United States and it included bluegrass, Celtic fiddling, Latin jazz, jazz, fiddling as well as hip-hop and reggae and music from non Western areas of the world. The editors of Strings Magazine, for example, make an eff ort to highlights alternative (non-classical) string music in each of its youth supplements. Berklee School of Music is famous for its studies of jazz, rock and other forms of commercial, non-classical, music. A Google search of ‘multicultural music’ yielded 2,260,000 entries alone! Let’s keep music education fresh and exciting by studying music that speaks to the students in our schools in addition to the music we all know and teach.

Please send me ideas for sessions for this and future Winter Conferences if you have a desire to see a specific group or music. I welcome any of your comments, ideas and inquiries as we go along in the year! Have a wonderful start of the school year!