Authenticity in COVID-19

• Arturo Treviño Jr.
• Posted 4/21/21
• 0 comments

I pick up my backpack, tread to the back of the classroom and switch off the light. The only light in the room comes from the open door in my classroom. Rising cases appearing in the country and hitting the county I work in made me consider how our students will feel disconnected from ensemble rooms or congregating in the choir room or band hall.  

Could our programs survive in this new territory? There was something robotic and inhuman considering this question, a fear in looking for safety in the community. Our students seek protection every day. As I walk out, I think, “I hope this lasts a month.”  

One month has dragged to a year, and here we are. This article can provide you academic scholarship sources and tips to consider in shaping your “authentic” performance.  

Disclaimer, the perspective I offer in this article will be general. You are the master of this content. These suggestions derive from my lived experience in educating low-socioeconomic, disadvantaged students who are 99% either Hispanic, Latino, or Mexican American. I include academic scholarship that has aided my program; perhaps it can help yours.  

Let’s unpack this term, “authentic.” Unless you or your students have a shekere from Ghana at home, pleading for an aesthetically “authentic” performance from home will be challenging to execute. Realistically, we all cannot afford instruments like these.  

What this pandemic has supplied me is a better understanding and connection with my students. They share their culture and their testimonio (testimony) as lived experiences. While the pandemic has physically separated educators from the sacred space, our musical temples, we have drawn closer to learn more from our students. Roles reversed. I am privileged to share this confessional with you as an insider, an educator teaching, and an outsider, a graduate ethnomusicology student looking through scholarship.  

Consider “authentic” as a term that borders on the fuzzy. It’s not difficult to imagine the theoretical aspect of border studies. Gloria Anzaldua (2010) defined borders as spaces that delineate “safe and unsafe, us from them” (p. 25). She mentions that “a borderland is a vague and undetermined space…” (p. 25).  

Last week’s Google Meet session included getting disconnected in a middle of a walkthrough. Professional shame. I wonder if that exists. Internally, I said, “Tragame tierra (Swallow me earth).” Welcome to the pandemic nightmare.  

You may have your fair share of testimonial experience in dealing with digital borders that includes tech issues, an assortment of apps, and, dare I say it, low battery warning signs. Oh, I forgot to add insufficient hard drive space. Since, like you, we have all made something for our students in this pandemic. Your inventive, ingenious means of divergent thinking have assisted in keeping your program stay afloat and shine in the eyes of your administrators and fine arts coordinators. You did it! 

This new musical landscape of authenticity is borderless, and let us make it borderless in the context of stripping limits from making music.  

Know your community  

You know your student demographic make-up and can trace cultural references as a means to scaffold your performance and student’s learning experience. Do jottings while you teach to help you gather data on better assisting your students. Informal polls might help you collect data in an ice-breaker activity.  

Try to do the surveys as anonymous as possible to encourage more participation. These testimonies provide a snapshot of the student’s cultural lens that they bring to class. Meaning, you have a means of including everyone’s interest and those cultures that are also different from the student’s background. 

Research 

Morrison, Demorest, Campbell, Bartolome, and Roberts (2013) wanted to find whether the enculturation effect could be changed in fifth graders through the extended intensive instructional unit in another culture, like Turkish music.  

Two elementary schools include three fifth-grade classes in this study with a large sample size (N = 110), two of which were the experimental group and the other as the control group. Data took the form of pre-tests and post-tests. The elementary music specialists developed and implemented lessons similar to the teaching environments before the study.  

The experimental group focused on Turkish folksongs and rhythms, while the control group focused on European Folksongs and rhythms. Although the groups were separated, both groups observed a Turkish musician play; researchers expanded that they did not want to take away that opportunity from the students. 

Findings resulted in that students became better at taking the test but did not show significance in music memory from the differentiation between Turkish and Western music. What does this mean?  Both groups had students retain the information on Turkish music. So, pedagogical elements aside, students engaged with the content and grasped the knowledge presented to them. 

Refection 

Looking back at “Authentic” performances, I used QuaverEd’s version of Jabu Na Simba with my choir club. I first clapped the pattern, they echoed. I showed them the song in chunks. I then allowed them to explore the rhythm in different Orff instruments and some drums.  

At the moment, I did not have either a dumbek or tubano. I had one large gathering drum, a small djembe, and a broken shekere. Mind you, this is all pre-COVID. Yet, there was something at that moment my students were realizing; they were discovering and listening to each other make music. 

Part two of this article spotlights research and thoughts on three additional ways to shape “authentic” experiences for your students forcing us to re-imagine rehearsing in an online setting.  So, I invite you to explore blurring traditional authentic lines in creating music until, one day, we can all have our ensembles back in person.   

References 

• Dunbar-Hall, P. (2005). Colliding perspectives? Music curriculum as cultural studies.  Music Educators Journal, 91(4), 33-37. https://doi-org.ezhost.utrgv.edu/10.2307/3400156 
• Green, L. (2005). The music curriculum as lived experience: children’s “natural” music-learning processes. Music Educators Journal, 91(4). P. 27-32. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3400155 
• Koops, L. H. (2010). “Can’t we just change the words?” The role of authenticity in culturally informed music education. Music Educators Journal, 97(1), 23-28.  
• Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40960174. 
• Morrison S. J., Demorest S.M., Campbell P.S., Bartolome S.J., Roberts J. C. (2013). Effect of intensive instruction on elementary students’ memory for culturally unfamiliar music. Journal of Research in Music Education, 60(4). 363-374. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/419995554