Ethnic Music in Nashville: A Choral Approach
Abstract
Ethnic Music in Nashville: A Choral Approach, a six-week unit plan designed for middle or high school choir, featured five prominent Nashville, Tennessee, world music cultures. These music-cultures, selected based on Metro Nashville Public School demographic information, were: Somali music, Kurdish music, mariachi, sacred harp, and Gospel music. As a result of this selection, the project addressed aspects of both immigrant and domestic folk music culture. After six lesson plans that explored each musical culture, the unit culminated in a performance of the a cappella choral piece, "One Language is Never Enough," that aimed to teach students about the music from these cultures in a way that was accessible to both middle and high school students. In addition to the piece and lesson plans, there were performance notes; an International Phonetic Alphabet transcription of the foreign text; and a unit website, which contained videos and background information. This project aimed to bring both domestic and foreign languages and musical cultures to students in an accessible and interactive way that improved both their understanding of the cultures and their musicianship skills. Potentially, it served the purpose of improving the understanding of Nashville students’ knowledge of their own folk music cultures.
Subject Area
Music education|Curriculum development
Recommended Citation
Felicity Constance Mazur-Park,
"Ethnic Music in Nashville: A Choral Approach"
(2017).
ETD Collection for Tennessee State University.
Paper AAI10690790.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI10690790