The question today is whether music teachers should be experts in jazz or American Folk Music. This is a difficult question, especially for me because I have very little jazz experience. Nonetheless jazz has worked its way into my life in many shapes and forms. I took guitar lessons for many years while I was growing up and played mostly blues and rock songs, I learned the blues scales and style and have a very good understanding of it. During this time my teacher introduced me to jazz and I started practicing from a jazz guitar book for beginners. I hated it....it wasn't the music or the sound of it, it was just very difficult for me at 14 to wrap my head around jazz and understand what was happening musically. My only other music influence at the time was my public school strings program where I played viola and mostly classical repertoire. Jazz was very new to me. The rhythms, the chords, the scales, they just did not make sense to me. It happened again a year later when I began taking piano lessons and my piano teacher happened to be a jazz pianist....I quit shortly after. Yet, jazz still amazes me. Even though I shied away from it for many years, I still had a deep appreciation for it. The sounds of jazz made sense when I listened to them and I hold it and jazz performers in very high regard. I regretted giving up my jazz training but nothing could change that I just did not understand it. Looking back now it might have to do with the fact that I never listened to jazz when I was growing up nor do I remember doing anything jazz related in my elementary music classes. Is this why I was never able to do anything with jazz? Because I had no exposure to it?
It makes sense...Someone who grew up listening to those harmonies and rhythms only found in jazz would find it natural to play jazz, just like I found other genres easier to play than others. So is it the fault of my music teachers for keeping jazz a secret? I don't blame them, it's still relatively new and honestly, I'm not sure I would know how to teach it right now either. So what can we do? I think we need to accept it as a prominent institutionalized art form which holds merit as a type of music that is unique to our nation. It is no doubt a part of our musical as well as cultural history and I think it might not be getting the attention it needs at early stages of development. But why? Is it daunting for a teacher to try to teach young children about complicated rhythms and chords when they still need to learn the basics? Maybe for some, it definitely is for me...
And what about American Folk Songs? Surely these songs hold as just merit as being unique to our nation as jazz and they are easy to teach. Most fall on simple I, IV, V chord patterns which many students will recognize from pop or other songs. The rhythms are easy to follow along and can promote classroom participation and learning. I know I could teach children these songs; pull out my guitar, sing a few lines, have them sing it back, in no time my students will be able to sing This Land is Your Land. To what extent should we learn about folk music? Should we use them as a basis for other musical instruction? Should we use This Land is Your Land to teach students about simple rhythms and introduce solfege? It seems like a teach could do a lot with American Folk songs while implementing music learning as well as cultural and historical learning. Plus, these songs are usually fun for kids to sing and are part of our oral traditions as Americans, which should be passed down as well as used as a learning tool.
So which American Folk Songs should every student and every American know?
The national anthem: Personally I find this song to be a little dull, but it would be strange if I did not know it by heart. Students should at least be exposed to this song, not only does it have merit in the music classroom, it also promotes nationalism and develops a strong bond to one's country. It is a song they will hear for the rest of their lives if they stay in America and would be taboo not to know it.
This Land is Your Land: If you ask a kid today who Woody Guthrie is about 90% will have no idea who you are talking about. If you tell them that he wrote This Land is Your Land then students will remember who you are talking about. Woody Guthrie is an American Folk icon and I believe that he lead the way for American Folk as well as Peter Seeger. The song itself is a great song to know, just because everyone knows it and again it is a song which prides our country. It is a great sing a long song for classes and can teach many musical lessons. The message itself is a good thing for all young students to learn, we share this country with many people from different backgrounds and cultures but it is still ours to share.
I think those are the two most necessary folk songs, other than that there are plenty of other short songs which are easy to learn and teach such as: Yankee Doodle, Skip to my Lou, She'll be Coming Around the Mountain, Row, row, row, your boat, Oh Susannah, I've Been Working on the Railroad, Home on the Range, Do Your Ears Hang Low?, and Clementine. While the context that these songs were written in may not fit into the context of our society today, they are still tunes that were written by Americans as they founded the country we know today. These songs should live on in our country while new songs are added among them to include all of America's history up to the present. What songs from the last decade will become the folk songs of the next century? It is the responsibility of music teacher to be collectors of our oral musical history and pass it on to each generation so our musical traditions live on. Not to mention they are beneficial for teaching music anyways...
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