Focus on the positive
I wish that I had had the opportunity to share several recent experiences with Carolyn West, quoted in “Researcher sites negative influences of hip-hop.” For the past six years, I have been the director of a Professional Development for Urban Music Educators Project that particularly focuses on the middle school grades. Through an attitude survey, we learned that more than 85 percent of the students in the participating schools in Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg listened to the same hip-hop radio station. To be successful in engaging these young people, we had to respect and learn their language.

From the beginning, our project has included rappers who were students at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. Public school students have found this art form to be a natural and creative form of expression.

One seventh-grade girl in a music class wrote lyrics explaining why crying for her friend who had been killed was “not a waste of time.”

In another project, supported by the Center for the Arts and Society at Carnegie Mellon, public school students and young adults worked with young professional rappers and recording technicians from the Pittsburgh area in the Arts Greenhouse. In the end of the year celebration, they were joined in performance by Jasiri X, a Pittsburgh rapper and community activist, and Queen GodIs, from Brooklyn, a graduate of Vassar who performed rap songs with a strongly positive message. Participants had become comfortable on the Carnegie Mellon campus and had gained skill with technology, poise and confidence. Even though they represented the realities of their lives, there were no degrading messages in these lyrics.

Early blues lyrics, jazz rhythms and the Beatles were all considered threats to the establishment. Certainly, there are rap lyrics that are inappropriate, but helping young people find the positive messages, and to critically evaluate what they hear is a far more rewarding and achievable goal than to condemn the art form and try to prevent young people from listening.

Keyboard Project Gets Kids Excited about Learning

Music has the power to enrich lives. That’s why Carnegie Mellon is working to put keyboards into the classrooms of many Pittsburgh public schools through a project funded by the Grable Foundation.
“It’s so vitally important for music to be part of the curriculum in every school,” said Carnegie Mellon’s Natalie Ozeas, associate head of the School of Music. “We don’t deny that reading and math are important, but they are not enough.”
The students are not only learning how to play keyboards but also improvising and composing their own music. The impact, according to Ozeas, has not gone unnoticed.
“The students are eager to come to class. They show up for concerts in the evenings,” she explained. “In a time when urban school attendance is a problem, our programs provide a reason to come to school.”
So far, about 470 keyboards and teaching materials have been placed in 23 local schools through the project. In addition to providing funding, the Grable Foundation will occasionally provide an exceptionally gifted student with his or her own keyboard for home use.
Ozeas also works with the Professional Development for Urban Music Educators project in 18 high poverty schools in Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg. An enrichment curriculum has been developed to actively engage students in music making.
Based on “hands-on” learning experiences, the curriculum uses World Drumming, Dalcroze eurhythmics, Hip Hop and workshops with members of the River City Brass Band (RCBB) in which the kids can ask questions and observe real musicians working behind the scenes.
The students have also been working with conductor Denis Colwell to plan a concert by RCBB exclusively for the schools in the project. In this concert, an ensemble of students will perform World Drumming with the band.
This is just one of the many ways in which Carnegie Mellon professors and students are working with schools, companies and other entities to make a positive impact in the Pittsburgh region.
Related Links: School of Music Read More River City Brass Band

Music’s just the beginning for Wilkinsburg elementary school keyboard class

By Stephanie Hacke
For the Tribune-Review
Thursday, April 5, 2007

With 20 keyboards in one room, Lois Clark’s sixth-grade music class at Kelly Elementary School in Wilkinsburg gets a little noisy at times. After practicing with headphones on, each student gets a turn to play what they practiced in front of their classmates.
“It’s fun,” Sjon Walters, 12, of Wilkinsburg, said. “If we were here singing, it wouldn’t be fun.”

Kelly Elementary School received the keyboards in the fall and is the newest participant in the Carnegie Mellon University School of Music’s Pittsburgh Keyboard Project. It is the only school among about 20 participants that is not part of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Clark said.

“They’re making very good progress, and they seem to be really enjoying it,” said program director Natalie Ozeas, who is an associate professor and associate head of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Music.

The program received funding from The Grable Foundation to provide each participating school with keyboards, books, headsets and money to maintain the equipment. Typically, at least 75 percent of the students in participating schools come from low-income families, Ozeas said.
“Even if they do have a keyboard at home, by doing it here they’re learning how to do it correctly,” Clark said.

India Thurman, 11, for example, said she always played the piano when she visited her grandmother, but she didn’t know what she was doing until she started this class.

“I learned what the notes are,” India said. “We’ve learned tips to set up how to find them.”

Clark uses the keyboards with all of her students in the second through sixth grades.

“The younger grades are so looking forward to playing,” the music teacher said. “But the first thing that we teach them is how to treat an instrument.”

Her sixth-graders used the keyboards for the first 18 weeks of the year and then spent the last nine weeks studying music related to African culture, before returning to the keyboards for the rest of the year. So far this year, they have learned the keys and focused on how to listen and play their songs together in duets. Next, she plans to teach them how to use the pedals.

“They keep asking questions as to when they will get to create their own music,” Clark said.

In addition to learning how to read music, students using the keyboards also have grown more interested in music, Clark said,

“Their enjoyment of music has improved.” Clark said.

Sjon has enjoyed the keyboard so much, he said, he someday wants to invest in a keyboard of his own.

“I don’t have a piano or keyboard at home,” Sjon said. “I want to get one, but they’re expensive.”

Clark said that out of any instrument, she thinks the keyboard should be the first one that students learn because it involves use of the entire body and listening skills and can be used to teach students how to work together when they work on a piece simultaneously.

“I want them to be lifelong learners of music,” Clark said. “I hope I’m able to pass that passion along to them. I think in the long run they learn respect for themselves and the instruments. A lot of life lessons are learned in the keyboard.”