Popular music

Upon reading the article about popular music, I found much of the information in it very informative. There was much discussed about the difference between popular music education and the type of music teaching that has been mostly normalized by society. During elementary school, I had a music teacher who preferred to teach so-called “popular” music in class, favouring mainly songs that the students themselves chose, and having many instruments that allowed for us to emulate the songs with much of their original instrumentation. However, upon moving to middle school and high school, the music program shifted away from “popular” music and mainly focused on classical music, while also limiting the students into either general music, strings, band and vocals. This resulted in many students choosing not to pursue music in high school, choosing other electives instead. This shows that the majority of students, as mentioned in the article, could feel pressure at attempting to live up to the standard of professional or famous classical music. During my music classes from elementary school to high school, there was also very little focus put upon composition, with teachers almost solely focusing on playing the music we were given. However, during my elementary school years, the teacher there allowed us to experiment with the instruments in the room, and served mainly as a mediator, much like how the article described the form of teaching used in practices like modern band. During this time, there was significantly more student engagement during classes, with most students participating and volunteering to play. Conversely, when switching to the more “traditional” form of music teaching during high school and middle school, the students who did not feel as though they were good players mainly chose to sit in the back and not attempt to play or contribute as much as others. Thus, it can be seen that the method of music teaching present during my elementary school years focused more on developing a bond between the students and creating music, whereas during the later years of my education, there was a higher focus on imitating music already given to us. Overall, I do agree with the article that there is a heavy focus on appearing professional or elite during music education, without so much increasing a student’s love of music itself. If music lessons were to resume a more carefree approach that allowed each student to blossom individually, there might be more musicians created during school.