BCM Blog

But would you put it on your iPod?

Last week found itself culminating the end of the Manhattan School of Music Summer Music Camp.  For 2009 at least.  My involvement this summer was simply as a teacher of music theory, of which I taught 3 beginner classes.  I've taught at the MSM Camp for 5 summers now and am consistently amazed at the outstanding musicians at the camp, which is free to the campers and funded entirely by sponsors.  The campers do have to pass an audition to get in and each year the talent level seems to increase.  The local ABC network even ran a clip on the camp which you can watch here.

One thing that always impresses me is the musical intellect some of these campers exhibit.   I start every class with formal listening.  It is a passionate belief of mine that in the academic realm, too much time is often spent on learning about music, and not enough on simply listening.  So many musicians can spout book-learned knowledge about music, its history and its harmonic and rhythmic theory, but when it really comes down to it, don't know how to simply listen.  

So we practice formal listening every single class. This involves listening with absolutely NO talking, reading or any other activity in order to give one's complete attention to the music, which usually only plays for 2 -3 minutes.  I ask the students to try to identify the instruments/voices, genre, and other technical aspects of the music such as world location or meter first.

After a factual analysis we usually go back and listen to one more minute or so of the tune with the goal of figuring out how that song relates to one's self on a personal level.  This is where the fun begins for me as a teacher.  I like to ask abstract questions such as "under what circumstance would you listen to this song?" or "what do you think the singer was trying to express" as well as the simpler "does this song make you feel happy? sad? energetic? soothed?" etc.  I absolutely LOVE hearing students' thoughts on these non-technical aspects and am often touched by the innocence and depth they exhibit.  

For example, many students associate songs with activities such as parties, nighttime, traveling, or memories ie. "this reminds of the time my uncle took us to the zoo."   But I was so impressed when after listening to the first 3 or so minutes of Maria Schneider's "Hang Gliding" that one student explained that he felt like the music should accompany one of those IMAX Films that sore over changing landscape! (Schneider wrote the song after literally hang gliding in Brazil I believe). That analysis was dead on and I was completely impressed!

I'm also humbled by the blunt opinions these students share about music I find highly intelligent though maybe not as accessible.  At the very end of every session I ask for a simple and honest opinion, encouraging  students to dislike songs just as much to like them.  My only rule for this is to be respectful and to support their opinion (I can't STAND when the opinion is "I didn't like it because it's not my type of music.").  It's my hope to encourage students to be selective in their opinions by holding them to higher standards of listening as well as have the courage to speak them openly. But the defining opinion is the one word answer to my last question, "Would you put this on your iPod?" Interesting to see what songs make the iPod cut! Every song this summer made at least one student's iPod!

Anyway, I could go on and on about these experiences but the main reason for this posting is because I had planned to give each camper a list of all the music we listened to over the summer in the case they wanted to get a copy and actually put the songs on their iPod.  Unfortunately, despite my recent distraction with music printing, I completely forgot that my home printer was completely out of ink! So late Thursday night, as I began typing up the list, I realized I would be unable to print it.   Thus, I offer this online list to my students as compensation.

Below is a list of every song we listened to except for the music brought in by my campers on the designated listening days (also a great learning experience for me!). I've provided where possible a link  to purchase the tunes (no freebies here!). 

So dear campers, I enjoyed our time together this summer and though you may forget how to build minor scales or the circle of 5ths, if nothing else, I leave you some good listening!

Song	Artist	CD
"Thriller"	Michael Jackson	Thriller
"Here Comes The Sun"	The Beatles	Abbey Road
"Ran Kan Kan"	Tito Puente	Mambo Kings Soundtrack
"Bach Sonata No. 1 G minor Adagio	Nathan Milstein	Bach Solo Violin Sonatas
"Blues Before Sunrise"	Eric Clapton	Beyond the Cradle
"Signed Sealed Delivered"	Stevie Wonder	Signed Sealed and Delivered
"Lai Lara"	Nuriya
"Fibre de Verre"	Paris Combo	Putumayo Presents: French Cafe
"Hedwig's Theme"	John Williams	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
"It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing!)"	Ella Fitzergerald	Ella & Duke at the Cote d'Azur
"Rise Up"	Diane Birch	Bible Belt
"Waltz for Ruth"	Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny	Beyond the Missouri Sky
"Musette"	Yo-Yo Ma & Bobby McFerrin	Hush
"Moon River Cha Cha"	Henry Mancini	Breakfast at Tiffany's
"Carnival of the Animals: The Swan"	Camille Saint-Saens	Carnival of the Animals
"Giant Steps"	John Coltrane	Giant Steps
"The Sad Song"	Fredo Viola	The Turn
"No Woman, No Cry"	The Fugees	The Score
"Just Like Him"	Claudia Quintet	I, Claudia
"Cry, Cry, Cry"	Johnny Cash	The Legend of Johnny Cash
"A Boy Named Sue"	Johnny Cash	The Legend of Johnny Cash

" The woman musician never was born...

...capable of sending anyone further than the nearest exit." Or so a 1938 Downbeat editorial entitled "Why Women Musicians are Inferior" goes. Laura Barnett, contributor to the UK's Guardian, delves this frustrating issue further in her recent article Lady Plays the Blues:

The man sitting in front of me in Ronnie Scott's jazz club got me thinking. I was there to hear the Portico Quartet, but had instead spent the first half listening to the sound of his voice as he chatted to his companion - so I had asked him to be quiet. At the end of the gig he apologised a little too contritely for spoiling my enjoyment. Then he added "Why are you here, anyway? Is your boyfriend in the band?"

The answer was no, but it was the question that mattered. This man may have been a sexist throwback, but I wondered if there could be any basis to his assumption that I could not have been there out of my own appreciation of the music. I looked around the club. The band were all men. Most of the audience were men, except for a group of women whose shouts and whoops made me think they really were with the band. It made me wonder where, and how, women fit into jazz.

I can completely relate to the "is your boyfriend in the band" question (which is even more frustrating when your boyfriend actually is in the band) but I can trump this further with an experience I had when I was playing sax (way back in the day) with a funk band for a jazz brunch. The entire band was dressed in all black and the gig was a 3 hour deal. I had been on the stage for the entire time, but twice, make that two times, when I left the bandstand to go to the bathroom, I was flagged down by people who thought I was a waitress. I still had my neckstrap on and everything, but some how even as the only girl, playing a saxophone in front of the band, I was not recognized as a musician.

Barnett goes on to muse about why women are not as successful in the jazz realm siting such reasons as early education often places girls on non-jazz instruments such as flute as well as the lack of competitiveness needed that is more natural in men. She quotes several women such as Maria Schneider and Toshiko Akiyoshi as well as a few London based female jazzers. It is an interesting article on a subject that has been pontificated about almost endlessly, though its importance is significant.

Read the rest of the article, as well as this response from the blog LondonJazz.

My opinion in a nutshell is an optimistic one. I see things slowly improving. For instance, my elementary band was pretty gender balanced when it came to choosing instruments (boys on flutes, girl on drums and brass) and there was interest in jazz from both sides. The amount of female jazz instrumentalists is increasing, we even had our first female horn player headline at the Vanguard last year. I still often get the assumption that I am a vocalist when introduced as a jazz musician, but men don't look at me funny (any more) when I say that I am a composer.

As Maria puts it, "With women, maybe it's like this. If you're mediocre, you might have a tough time. If you're really good, nobody can deny it."