Ideas For Teaching Respect For Cultural Music

The tried and true method for getting kids of any age to stop giggling about unfamiliar music is to make it familiar. It's the absolute bottom line for introducing new music.

Tips:

• As you work with them, express your wide-eyed wonder at all the amazingly different ways people can do music. "Isn't it wild how people can love so many kinds of music?!" Sell it with your enthusiasm.
• Extract from the kids all the ways the music is the same. Enjoy how the differences make it sound so "special."
• Include comments about how your music preferences are kind of like your food preferences: What you're used to is your favorite.
• Allow students the right to be uncomfortable with the new and verbalize that. I for one hated the sound track to Fiddler On The Roof the first time I heard it. It wasn't until the third time listening to it that I started liking it, and now I have it almost memorized.
• Play the unfamiliar piece at least three different times so they start getting past the unknown and into the familiar. THIS IS CRUCIAL FOR ANY NEW KIND OF MUSIC. This includes hip-hop, opera, Bulgarian women's choir, monks chanting, etc.
• Find pictures of the culture or instruments and share these with the students. It helps the students identify that the music will be different and somehow makes for an easier transition into the familiar.