Advocacy
"In an ensemble, you learn compassion, you learn empathy, you learn discipline, you learn languages, you learn history, you learn focus. All of these things are essential for every other part of your life... You start to build a sense of an ethical foundation through the art that you're singing and that you're internalizing."
"Studies - hard data - shows that that social environment is essential for a sense of well being, for a sense of building community, empathy, compassion... this is the core of who we are and who we need to be." - Eric Whitacre "Choral music is not one of life's frills. It's something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls. You express, when you sing, your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than a sum of the parts. All of those people are pouring out their hearts and souls in perfect harmony, which is kind of an emblem for what we need in this world; when so much of the world is at odds with itself, that just to express, in symbolic terms, what it's like when human beings are in harmony, that's a lesson for our times and for all time. I profoundly believe that."
"...a school without a choir is like a body without a soul. We have to have a soul in our lives." - John Rutter Music Education Advocacy Speech
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Music Advocacy Speech | |
File Size: | 44 kb |
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Watch this video all the way through. It is deceptive at first, but speaks the truth.
Links
Childrens Music Workshop
School Music Matters
NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Foundation
The National Association for Music Education
Parents' Music Room
Sir Ken Robinson
Texas Music Educators Association
Music Advocacy Video Playlist (YouTube)
Taylor Mali
Playing for Change
Favorite inspirational movies about Music and Education
- Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) A frustrated composer finds fulfillment as a high school music teacher.
- Music of the Heart (1999) Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.
- Freedom Writers (2007) A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
- August Rush (2007) A drama with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.
School Music Matters
NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) Foundation
The National Association for Music Education
Parents' Music Room
Sir Ken Robinson
Texas Music Educators Association
Music Advocacy Video Playlist (YouTube)
Taylor Mali
Playing for Change
Favorite inspirational movies about Music and Education
- Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) A frustrated composer finds fulfillment as a high school music teacher.
- Music of the Heart (1999) Story of a schoolteacher's struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.
- Freedom Writers (2007) A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.
- August Rush (2007) A drama with fairy tale elements, where an orphaned musical prodigy uses his gift as a clue to finding his birth parents.
A Choir is a Beautiful Thing
Muriel
Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog,
Europa Editions, 2008
A Choir is a beautiful thing.
Yesterday afternoon was my school’s choir performance….
Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fer-Lemeur or Segolene Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings surrendering to music.
Every time it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.
A Choir is a beautiful thing.
Yesterday afternoon was my school’s choir performance….
Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fer-Lemeur or Segolene Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings surrendering to music.
Every time it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment during a choir.
When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.
In the end I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.
“Music is important. It says things your heart can't say any other way, and in a language everyone speaks. Music crosses borders, turns smiles into frowns, and vice versa. These observations are shared with a hope: that, when schools cut back on music classes, they really think about what they're doing - and don't take music for granted."
– Dan Rather, CBS News