A riff on music in the classroom

If your class has ever been interrupted by sounds from down the hall -- screaming guitars, a pulsating reggae beat, or a bellowing baritone (whether it's Wagnerian opera or blues singer Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton ) -- there's a good chance I am the culprit. Using music in the classroom is one of my favorite techniques, whether I am teaching Western Civilization, Global Awareness, or the Holocaust. I love listening to music and sharing it with others; I also like that my students often relate to it more easily than the written word.

That's not why I use music in class, though. Music shaped history, from the pomp and ceremony of Baroque that undergirded absolutism to the dramatization of Germanic mythology by Wagner that inspired nationalism. It offers insight into our past: few things capture the agony of America's tortured history of racism as Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit." There's some truth to the idea that art and culture can "bring the past to life" in a way that a textbook cannot (although it can also show how far we are from the original context that made the music significant; I have yet to witness a riot in the classroom after playing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, as took place at its 1913 premier).

Music reminds us that spheres of life like culture, economics, society, and politics are interconnected, and that each of us is tied in with broader currents in the world. Sly and the Family Stone's Stand! doesn't just say something about racism in the late 1960s; it also shows how people fought to change their world -- even as their critique was mixed up with other factors (from drug use to economics), as life always is.

So far, this is all very heady. There's still another aspect of music to address -- emotion. Perhaps even more than literature and art, music conveys the personhood of its creator because it's so physical; the voice, breath, and movement required for playing come from the performer's body. Music encourages us to perceive our shared humanity with the performer, recognizing that they are fellow human beings with thoughts, feelings, and ambitions. These feelings may be different than ours (or even repulsive, as with white supremecist "Hatecore" music), but this shared humanity is essential to grasp.

Those are just a few things to think about next time you hear music blaring down the hall.