What Can Michael Teach us About Performance?

So, I have the flu this week and to pass the time I'm watching "This is it".  (Michael Jackson's last documentary.)  I hadn't expected to want to show it to my music students, but now I think I will.  There are some things about him and his work ethic I want them to see.

Now, I know I'm not the only one who is super annoyed by the hypocrisy of people over the whole Michael Jackson death thing.  For years, the public perception was that he was a crazy pedophile.  Then, as soon as he died, boom!  Instant genuis/success/idol/etc overnight.  Okay so in his personal life, he was a mess, had too much plastic surgery, and you'd let NEVER let your kids around him.  But---in his professional life, he really was fantastic at what he did.  A true performer. 

What I want my students to learn from Michael Jackson:

• Work Hard - Most shows these days make it look like good performances just happen spontaneously, without rehearsal.  Most kids think that they can just "free-style" it on stage and something good will happen.  I have a hard time convincing them that a good performance take hours of rehearsal.  Well, this documentary shows just how hard and how many hours of work Michael put in behind the scenes.  Say whatever you want about him, but the man was NOT lazy!  He was committed to his work.
• Be Unique - Michael had his own style. In clothes, in dance moves, in music.  He did not look or sound like anyone else!  I don't want my students to imitate other, successful musicians.  I want them to develop their own style.
• Know Your Music - Michael knew his music inside and out.  Every key, tempo, pause, sound effect, etc.  He knew exactly what he wanted to hear and was not afraid to ask for it.
• No Diva Fits - You hear a lot about famous singers having diva fits, but did you ever hear about Michael having one?  This documentary showed him letting people know when things weren't right, but he did it respectfully.  No shouting or anger.  Just "hey, this isn't here and I need it to be.   Fix it."     
• Be Able to Bring It!  - In an age where so much reliance is given to digital editing and things like autotune, it's valuable for a performer to really be able to sing (or play) without electronic help.  Michael sang his shows live and was in tune.  You hear people like Tayler Swift and Justin Beiber sing live, and they're a quarter tone flat!  Also, I bet if Michael were to sing the National Anthem, he would've gotten the words right!
• Be the BEST at What You Do - 'Nuff said.

Again, I would never tell my students to emulate Michael Jackson's personal life, however as far as performance is concerned, they would do well to take note!
 

What happens in dance class, stays in dance class.

     This past Thursday was my second Indian dance class.  (We do 1/2 hour of Classical Indian dance and a whole hour of Bollywood-style dance.)  There were 3 new additions to the class:  three boys that I teach!  Ummmm.....awkward!  You should have seen the looks of panic on their faces as I walked up.  They said, "*gasp*  It's Ms. Lyn!", then they huddled together to discuss the situation. 

     Luckily, these are very good boys who do as they are told.  I couldn't have handled it otherwise.  I told them, "Hey guys.  I won't say anything at school if you don't.  It'll be our secret!"  Relief flooded over all their faces.  I can see why.  Do you know how brutal middle school is?  If the other boys found out that they were taking a dance class with FEMALES in the class, including their teacher, they would totally get beaten up.  We're going to treat it like fight club.  The first rule of Bollywood Dance Club is:  you do not talk about Bollywood Dance Club.  The second rule of Bollywood Dance Club is:  you DO NOT talk about Bollywood dance club!

On the plus side, the parents of the 3 boys are now going to join the class as well.  Hooray!  This will make it much less awkward (for me anyway) and more fun.  :-) 

Why Take Music?

As a musician and a music teacher, I get really annoyed when other people devalue my subject.  It upsets me when school administrators see music as a "stress reliever" class to provide students with a break between the "real" classes.  I was very happy to find this article which sums up my feelings on why music has intrinsic value.  Next time I have to justify my subject to an administrator, I'll use this.  Thanks, Dr. Tim!

"Why Take Music? (By:  Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser)

Music is a science
It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics.  A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time.

Music is Mathematical
It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

Music is a foreign language
Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.  The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

Music is history
Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling.

Music is physical education
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles; in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which responds instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Music is all these things, but most of all, Music is art
It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically boring (but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion.  That is one thing science cannot duplicate:  humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

MUSIC IS TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS:
Not because you are expected to major in music
Not because you are expected to play or sing all your life
Not so you can relax
Not so you can have fun

BUT - so you will be human
           so you will recognize beauty
           so you will be sensitive
           so you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
           so you will have something to cling to
           so you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good - in short, more life.

Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?

THAT IS WHY MUSIC IS TAUGHT"



If you have ever studied music or played an instrument, you have done all of the above things.  It kills me when school systems want to cut the arts.  Kids need this!  Did you know studies show that students who are involved in their school music program have higher test scores than the students who aren't?  I don't think this is a coincidence. 

Jamie Oliver is a super cool dude!

Last night, I watched the sneak preview to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  This famous, British, "Naked Chef" is trying to educate America about what we're feeding our kids.  I would encourage everyone to watch it (the 2-hour premier is this Friday).

School lunch just is not the same as it was when I and my fellow genXers were in school.  Rarely does anything actually get cooked in the cafeteria.  I remember having some kind of meat with some kind of vegetables every day when I was a kid at school.  Also, they used to make the bread and we had a salad bar option.  Not so now!  As a teacher, I see all the junk that passes for school lunch around here.  Kids are being given pizza, nachos, hamburgers, or hotdogs almost EVERY day!  They count ketchup as a vegetable!  Also, too much starch is put on there.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen chicken nuggets with mashed potatoes AND french fries on the plates.  (They count potato as a vegetable, apparently.)  This is wrong!  If I were a parent, I would raise hell about this with the school board and I certainly would  not sign my child up for the school lunch plan!  As a school, we should be educating the kids about what they should be eating.  We should not be programming them to think that junk food is okay to be eaten every day.   

Unfortunately, we have allowed the food lobbyists and big agri-business to hi-jack our health.  Jamie is trying to point how exactly how bad processed food is for us.  He makes a good point about how most people laugh and say, "yeah, I know this food is bad" and act like it's no big deal.  But when confronted with the fact that they are killing their children (taking as much as 14 years off their lives), suddenly it becomes much more serious for them.  There are so many scary chemicals added to processed food these days....and we're giving it to kids!

Jamie has already done a show like this in England.  In it, he proved that school lunches COULD be made from fresh, healthy ingredients and cost the same as the junk!  (In some cases, the healthy food actually cost less.)  The sad thing is that a lot of the schools in England couldn't start serving the healthy food because of contracts they had with the food companies.  I fear that in America, the deals with the devil...I mean food companies....will be even more restrictive.  Still, I love what Jamie is trying to do here.

Teacher Act

Sure, I could probably earn more money doing something other than teaching, but I feel like what I do has intrinsic value. The best part of my job is when I get to put on music performances with my students.  Last night, a small vocal group of mine sang the music from "Sister Act" for a public performance.  If you've ever seen the movie, you know that this music is very upbeat, happy, and just fun.  It was a hit!  

I know "Sister Act" isn't considered to be a great movie or anything (even though I like it).  However, the scenes which involve the transformation of the choir are inspiring!  Whoopi Goldberg plays a woman who is a lounge singer, witnesses a crime, and has to go into the witness protection program.  She has to pretend to be a nun and live in a convent.  When she first hears the convent's choir, they sound terrible.  Among others, there is an old nun with a low voice; a shrill, operatic-sounding nun; and a shy nun who barely makes a sound.  When they sing together in unsion, they sound just awful.  Whoopi works with them to try and improve the sound.

Later in the movie, they show the choir singing in the next church service.  They start all prim and proper singing "Hail Holy Queen".  Then, they break out into the same tune accompanied by boistrous clapping and gospel-style harmonizing.  (There's a bit of a musical joke as well when they use Beatles-esce ascending dominant 7th sequences as transitions during the "alleluias".  If you're a musician, you'll be chuckling when you hear it.)  The same nuns who were terrible in one context were transformed into being fantastic in another context.  The low-singing nun sang a chant-style solo, the shrill nun sang an awesome high solo, and the shy nun was given a solo in which she belted it out!  Whoopi had taken each nun's apparent weakness and turned it into a strength!

This scene in the movie is a perfect way to describe what I feel my job is.  My goal is to find each student's strength and to put them in a context where they can really shine.  While I certainly don't always succeed, I do try.  I feel like I'm Whoopi, taking each student's gifts and combining them into something beautiful.  (Well, I'm not nearly as cool as Whoopi but a girl can dream, right?)

What was up with those Germans?

As a teacher, sometimes I chaperone field trips for my fellow teachers.  Yesterday, I went on the school art field trip.  The plan was to go to a place which had nature trails so that the kids could sketch things they saw.  My music students and the drama students were also allowed to go.  There ended up being 100 kids, 4 teachers, and about 12 parents. 

Luckily, the kids we took were very well behaved.  Seriously, I do not know how they could've been any better!  We allowed them to play outside for a bit after lunch.  There was a big open space, with several trails.  Also, there were loads of flowers and bamboo borders all around.  Some kids were playing football, others were skipping, still others were sitting and talking, while others were walking on the trails.  Some of them were fake sword-fighting with some fallen bamboo stalks, but we were watching them and it didn't get out of hand. 

In this particular nature center, other guests were there as well and they were allowed to drive through some of the trails in their cars.  A German couple drove past us, then pulled up to one of my fellow teachers and said, "These children are animals!  They belong in s zoo!  They are running around and breaking things!  You must do something."  We had been with the kids the whole time, and there was nothing terrible that they had done or were doing.  They were just acting like kids!  Has this couple ever been around kids before? 

As far as breaking things, I suppose he was talking about the bamboo.  First of all, they had only picked up the fallen bamboo.  Second, we had all been told by our guide that the bamboo grows 16 inches every 24 hours.  (Impressive!)  It only takes 60 days to grow to full size.  They have so much bamboo that they have to cut it down regularly so that it doesn't take over.  So, even if they had broken a live bamboo, it wouldn't have been the end of the world.  This couple drove by a few more times, giving us judgmental looks as they passed. 

I suppose German children would never do such things as fake sword-fight with bamboo, play football, or skip while singing.  Oh wait......I've been to Germany and they DO!  Why?  Because they're kids!!