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MUSIC EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA'S SCHOOL COMMUNITIES

Volume 3 Number 4, 7 May 2009

NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR MUSIC AND THE ARTS: (7 items)
AWARDS & PRIZES: (2 items)
THE BENEFITS OF MUSIC EDUCATION: (4 items)
RESOURCES: (4 items)
NEWS FROM HERE AND THERE: (5 items)
CONFERENCES & EVENTS: Research in Music Education Conference
REMINDERS
ACSSO EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR MUSIC AND THE ARTS

Arts a Priority for C21st Education

Media Release, National Advocates for Arts Education, 20 April 2009

A prominent arts education lobby coalition, the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) today highly praised the decision to include the visual and performing arts as priority learning areas in the second stage of national curriculum development by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) at its meeting on Friday April 17th.

Comprehensively representing the disciplines of dance, drama, media, music and visual arts education, the NAAE has been calling for the immediate inclusion of the arts in the work of the National Curriculum Board. NAAE had supported their case by presenting international research evidence proving the value of an arts rich education to children’s cognitive development.

“We are delighted that MCEETYA has recognised the central role of performing and visual arts education in fostering creativity, innovation, cultural understanding and social inclusion in Australian children as fundamental skills needed in the 21st Century,” said Julie Dyson a member of NAAE.

Read more at http://tinyurl.com/dmkqa4

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Now We Know: Music is Important for Young Children!

Deborah Pratt

Music is a valuable activity that contributes immensely to the development of a child. Here is some of the research that shows why, presented as it has unfolded over the last 15 years.

The value of musical activities for the intellectual development of children is in addition to the tremendous importance of early childhood musical experiences for the development of musical aptitude.

Edwin Gordon, a preeminent music educator and researcher, states that "Music aptitude is a product of both innate potential and early environmental experiences ... regardless of the level of music aptitude with which children are born, they must have early formal and informal experiences in music in order to maintain that level of potential. Otherwise, the level of music aptitude they may be born with will never be fully realized in achievement ..."

Just as verbal language background begins to be formed very early in life, the listening vocabulary of music should begin to be formed before a child is 18 months old and not later than 3 years of age.

By the time children enter school at age 5 or 6, the most important time for them to develop their music listening vocabularies has passed. This makes musical activities in the preschool years an extremely important foundation for every child's music education.

Read entire article at: http://tinyurl.com/dmapaf

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$30,000 gift sweet music

Louise Nunn, The Advertiser, April 11, 2009

RETIREE turned arts benefactor has donated $30,000 to help community choirs and establish a website to sell their music around the world. Val Kilgour, of Hallett Cove, is behind Choralworks Inc, a not-for-profit organisation.

"My driving force is that I absolutely believe in the healing and motivational aspects of singing in a group," she said. "My own experiences have shown me it's extremely inspirational, but we've also seen this with groups like the Choir of Hard Knocks, and I know community singing is helping a lot of people struggling in rural areas."

Kilgour joined a choir when her husband died and she lost her job in the mid-1990s. She created Choralworks Inc in 2007 to address issues of cost and copyright that make major new works very difficult for community groups to access. Choralworks' first commission, Adelaide composer Timothy Sexton's Songs for a Distant Land, will have its premiere in September.

Kilgour said Choralworks Inc would be relying on donations and sponsorships to achieve its objectives. "The idea is to encourage contemporary composers to write major new works for community groups," she said. "We also want to encourage more young people to join in and reap the benefits that can flow from being part of a community choir."

• Tax-deductible donations to Choralworks Inc can be made through AbaF (Australia Business Arts Foundation) at nathanis@abaf.org.au
• For more information about Choralworks Inc, go to http://tinyurl.com/czhlz9

Source: http://tinyurl.com/d6yxoj

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RESOURCES

Music Outback Foundation

Music Outback Foundation Limited is dedicated to the use of music and related art forms as a means of improving outcomes on remote Indigenous communities.

Australian Indigenous people are faced with the fragmentation of their culture, with disturbingly low outcomes in health, education, employment, and other community indicators.

Through careful development of its programs over six years, Music Outback has shown that music can be a powerful and effective multi-faceted vehicle for the reconnection of Indigenous people to their own cultural expression.

At the same time, music can effectively address serious needs in areas such as education, health, language preservation, and remote Indigenous employment.

Music Outback Foundation programs have been designed to:

Develop the use of music in remote isolated schools as a means of improving general education outcomes
Assist in the preservation of threatened languages and culture through the engagement of older community members in first language song writing
Engage school age Indigenous youth who don't attend school in creative activities that promote healthy lifestyle choices
Strengthen the roles of community adults in the mentoring and leading of young people in education and cultural expression
Involve various agencies on Indigenous communities in activities that build partnerships and cross-agency cooperation across the community

Find out more: http://tinyurl.com/ckmzwn

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Musica Viva

Inspiration is the essence of Musica Viva In Schools. Every year, for 26 years, we have offered high quality programs designed to bring music to life for students and teachers in their own schools.

Diversity, innovation and excellence are the keys to our program. When teamed with professional development for teachers, curriculum-based resources and highly-skilled professional musicians, Musica Viva In Schools provides a complete music education package for students and teachers alike.

Musica Viva In Schools is an excellent opportunity to ensure your students receive the very best music education.

Find out more: http://tinyurl.com/c53a7q

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The Song Room

The Song Room Vision is that all Australian children have the opportunity to participate in music and the arts to enhance their education, personal development and community involvement.

The Song Room is a National not-for-profit organisation that provides opportunities for enhanced learning and development for disadvantaged children through music and creative arts.

Whilst international research has demonstrated the children who learn music and arts have improved educational, social and personal outcomes; currently in Australia, up to 3 out of 4 children in Government Primary School have no music teachers. That equates to over 700,000 children missing out and often they are the children who need it the most.

The Song Room targets its long-term, free and tailored programs to disadvantaged children who would otherwise not have such opportunities, including socio-economically disadvantaged children, urban and rural Indigenous youth, children with learning, health or behavioural challenges, new migrant arrivals and children for whom English is a second language, children at risk of juvenile crime involvement, very young children (0-5 years) in disadvantaged areas and children in geographically isolated and remote regions.

Find out more: http://tinyurl.com/cczghk

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Australian Music Centre redefines the online world of Australian music

Media Release, 28 April 2009

Music lovers, festival programmers, teachers, students, and the creators and performers of original Australian music across the globe now have an indispensable new resource in Australian Music Centre Online.

The dynamic new website increases access to the Australian Music Centre's massive and ever-growing collection of works and information about Australian art music - including diverse genres from contemporary classical, improvisatory and jazz to experimental music and sound art.

Australian Music Centre Online is the result of more than five years of planning, development and work. The site already incorporates over 21,000 works from the Centre's collection - and there are many more to come. Biographies of 530 composers, improvisers and sound artists are included and there are some 30 guided tours of major works and themes in the history of Australian music.

Featured throughout the site at launch are over 2600 audio samples, including 35 integrated links to full length recordings hosted by the ABC's Classic Amp website.

An advanced repertoire finder already includes more than 1200 score samples for teachers, students, orchestras and ensembles to try, with some available for download, and there is an online shop with over 10,000 items including CDs, books and education kits for sale.

Find out more at: http://tinyurl.com/d8sxug

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NEWS FROM HERE AND THERE

AFGHANISTAN: Afghan music school emerges from ruins

Google Hosted News, 5 May 2009 (AFP)

KABUL - Two teenage violinists scrape their way through a French gavotte in a chilly classroom at Afghanistan's only high school for music, a bleak building and one-time ruin of Kabul's civil war.

"When it is cold, our fingers don't work so well," says 18-year-old Hogat Ruzabeh, perhaps trying to justify the rough sound. His dream, he says, is to one day perform in an Afghan symphony orchestra. Clad in denim jeans, Ruzabeh has turned up to practice an art form that he says is as important to him as "eating and drinking".

But Afghanistan's potential musicians are starved in a nation where war and Islamist extremism have eroded classical culture and destroyed a wealth of ancient art, film libraries and paintings. The Taliban regime, which ruled from 1996 to 2001, banned music, forcing many musicians to put away their instruments or go into exile.

Kabul's Secondary Vocational School of Music embodies such decay, having been plundered during the civil war in the 1990s between various political and military factions that ousted the Soviet occupiers. Hand grenades were tossed into concert pianos to splinter the wood into manageable sizes, adds musicologist Ahmad Sarmast, a driving force behind post-Taliban efforts to revive music in Afghanistan.

The 90 or so students also have few usable instruments: 35 students share a single drum kit, while 17 share one saxophone. Yet the dark times and sour notes may soon be coming to an end for the school, which is to be given a makeover due to begin next week. What is now a crumbling symbol of broken dreams is to be transformed into a world-class National Institute of Music for Afghanistan, Sarmast says.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/c98pt4

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CANADA: Ever wondered if there’s too much music?

Neil McCormick, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 2009

Ever wondered if there's too much music? Recent research shows the average American daily hears more than five hours of music. Saturation point, perhaps?

The answer may depend on whether music simply is entertainment or whether it serves as a fundamental biological function, as argued by the likes of Daniel Levitin, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal.

His influential This Is Your Brain On Music examined music's interactions with our brains. His follow-up, The World In Six Songs , suggests music "is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the way for more complex behaviours such as language, large-scale co-operative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next".

Levitin is skeptical about us being over-saturated with music. "It is true that our listening has become passive, and that's a big difference," he says. "Our ancestors, as far as we know, had far more music in their lives than we do. One needn't look any further than contemporary subsistence cultures, hunter-gatherers, and pre-industrial village-based living groups. Music is a continuous presence throughout their day. There are typically hours of singing at night around a camp fire, singing while performing daily activities, as part of ritual.

"The difference there is that everyone joined in the music-making, as opposed to what we do today, sitting quietly in passive listening mode. The average 14-year-old will hear more different music in a month than his great-grandfather might have heard in a lifetime, but probably not more minutes/hours of music than, say, someone 5000 years ago."

Our voracious appetite for music can suggest an addictive relationship. Just observe people's disconnection from their surrounds as they immerse their awareness in headphoned music. But computers equally distract, Levitin says. "New does not equal unhealthy. In fact, one could argue the contrary." Diversity of music broadens and enhances our aesthetic experience and allows us to pursue the music of our choice.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/c4s3e2 Originally published in UK Daily Telegraph.

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PAKISTAN: Music has died in the Swat valley of Pakistan under Taliban rule

Khushal Yousafzai, Freemuse, (posted 22 April 2009)

Musical expressions are completely banned and ruthlessly discouraged in the newly founded Taliban state of Swat in the north-western part of Pakistan. Hundreds of singers, musicians and women dancers have fled for other provinces.

The estimated 500 music shops that earlier sold music CDs of all types have been either bombed or looted, and the owners were threatened of dire consequences if they violated Taliban code of morality.

On 2 January 2009, a group of Taliban militants brutally killed a female dancer and singer Shabana in Mingora town and threw her dead body in the Green Square of the city for others to learn a lesson. Later on Taliban claimed responsibility for her murder. Her death was a clear message for other musicians and singers that now there is no space for music and dancing in the valley famous for its idyllic beauty, serene environment and centuries old musical heritage.

In Maulana Sufi Muhammad‘s interpretation of Islam, music is strictly prohibited and source of all sins, and it is expected that the Taliban will now further intensify their campaign against music and singers.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/cnvxxy

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UK: Sing out brother

Janette Owen, The Guardian, Tuesday 5 May 2009

It's not easy to upstage Jeremy Clarkson and Sir Alan Sugar, but last week both stars found themselves runners-up to a school choir at the prestigious Bafta awards.

The Choir: Boys Don't Sing, a BBC2 series featuring reluctant singers from a Leicester boys' school, beat Top Gear, The Apprentice and MasterChef to win the academy's award for best feature.

The win was also a personal triumph for choirmaster Gareth Malone, who had spent nine months at the Lancaster school, a large state school, trying to persuade the boys - and the staff - that singing is cool.

But although The Choir may have been compulsive viewing for millions, its popularity seems to have had little positive impact on teenage boys, most of whom still believe that singing is best left to girls. Boys might stretch their vocal cords in a rock band, but most don't like singing in front of their peers and rarely admit to getting a buzz from it when they do.