World Music
in the Schools

Gamelan Angklung in action

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Plans and Vision Statement

Engaging Youth in World Music

Starting in the spring of 1999, the Center for World Music embarked on a major World Music in the Schools program in San Diego city and county. The Center used its own resources to fund pilot programs in three schools and developed plans to expand the program based on that experience. By spring 2002, the program had grown to encompasses in-depth programs in music, dance, and theater from Indonesia and India, which were offered in three partner schools.

This development has been assisted by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, the City of San Diego, and the Asian Cultural Council.

Ravana by Katy

The kinds of experience provided to children by the performing arts have been severely curtailed in recent  years by budget cuts and time constraints imposed on teachers with increased enrollments. At the same time, one scientific study after the other shows that the study of music actually improves the way in which the brain functions, and that it leads to higher achievements in such areas as reading, writing, and mathematics. These are dividends added to the underlying benefits of discipline, sensitivity, and life enrichment that are provided by the study of music itself.

Building on the experience of an innovative schools program supported by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1975-76, when the Center was still located in the San Francisco Bay Area, the present program provides a deeper contact with world music and related cultures than is usually available in the fifty-minute format of presentation.

Basically, it consists of three areas of integrated instruction for each of the schools selected for participation:

1. An ongoing hands-on performance study from one selected area of the world, in either music, dance, or theater (or a combination of these). For this purpose the world has been divided up into nine areas: East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Australia/Pacific. To begin the study program an assembly program by an artist or group of high standing would provide an artistic benchmark for the children to experience first hand.
   
2. A series of in-service workshops for teachers, combined with classroom presentations on the related cultures of the main area chosen for each school. For the teachers this means expert instruction in fields like history, geography, social structures, language, literature and the arts--whatever elucidates the values of the culture at hand. For the children it involves an approach through the senses—smelling spices, feeling textiles, seeing (and making) art, tasting typical foods, and, of course, hearing music and, when appropriate, expressing music through dance or theater.
   
3. Over the period of a year, briefer presentations from other areas of the globe will be offered in each school to provide a broad world perspective. These circulating presentations, put together by the artists and presenters who represent the world areas of concentration already in existence at the individual schools, are intended to place the various performance and cultural studies within a global context.
4. An important element in the program is the encouragement of creativity, through design, construction, and tuning of instruments, the making of shadow puppets and textile designs, and even simple food prepared in the classroom. Experienced students help beginners to learn, a strategy of "kids teaching kids."

Making Bridges Between Cultures

Those who work with children in world music find that music almost always provides a quick and pleasant way to enter into another culture.   Perhaps the deepest and most compelling reason for introducing music to children from a world perspective is that it shows them how rewarding their approach to a different sound environment, not to mention a different culture, can be.

Ramayana by Jan Steward

As they mature and are inundated with ever more horrific daily examples of the difficulties of bridging cultural differences, it might just be the best thing we can do for them at a tender age to give them exciting and personally rewarding experiences in reaching the heart of another culture through its abstract systems of humanly organized sounds. Nowadays no one thinks that music is a universal language--that was a narrow pan-European idea that became popular during an age of aggressive colonization. But there is enough access to materials and enough experience at this point to send children on a rewarding journey into the music, the dance, the art, and eventually a whole panoply of ideas from other cultures.

The World Music in the Schools project aims to put in place the first stepping stones that lead to the musical riches of other cultures, and to present them consistently in a global context. While following state guidelines for the teaching of music, it greatly extends the range of understanding of such issues as rhythm, melody, kinds of instruments, the concept of musical ensemble, and the interrelationship of music, dance, and theater.

Modified: June 8, 2006