February Article

Leaping Hurdles for a New Direction

MusiKinesis is on a new path, forging new ground. You may have noticed it in reading the articles (September and December in particular). And this month, we’re ready to leap into it more boldly -- a new role for MusiKinesis in providing a streamlined approach to Dalcroze principles, in an initiative geared toward contemporary American education.

Here are the four hurdles establishing our new direction:

The First Hurdle: Accepting Differences
The Second Hurdle: Possibilities and Roots
The Third Hurdle: Reaching Out
The Fourth Hurdle: A New Design

Grounding

Jaques-Dalcroze believed in working with people as they are. He formed his method around the teachers and students of his own time and culture, and in the same way, we should be responsive to our own. There’s no value in insisting on square holes when confronted with round pegs.

Jaques-Dalcroze believed in uplifting society by spreading the joy of musical experience throughout community and culture. We need to tear down ivory towers that preserve the rigid details of Jaques-Dalcroze’s work at the expense of his broader purpose and philosophy.

Jaques-Dalcroze shed old rules to create new, relevant ideas. He worked against the idea of imposing old and distant rules when they became ineffective in reaching a wide range of people.

Jaques-Dalcroze had a clear, organized vision of his work. That was important to disseminating his work in demonstrations, performances, books and articles. At this point, there will probably never be one organized, shared definition of the method’s specifics in America. There is nothing inherently wrong with that -- schools of thought have simply developed and diverged over time. But it hinders clear understanding of any one way of working when all are grouped under the umbrella of a single name.
 

The First Hurdle: Accepting Differences

In my view, honesty is the most essential work ethic. Honesty requires us to face the fact that there are genuine differences among American Dalcrozians, and then to progress forward in clear, realistic terms. So it's time for MusiKinesis, as the first entity to publish a Dalcroze-based series of its kind, to establish a separate identity in order to avoid further confusion, or conflation of our approach with all other American Dalcroze teachers. The truth is we are not all the same.

It’s rather like the proverbial story of the three blind men who encountered an elephant, and came to different conclusions based on what part of the elephant they touched. In attending any one Dalcroze teacher’s course or workshop, someone could come away with an entirely different assessment than if they’d experienced a course or workshop from another teacher.

Heretofore, it seemed proper form to emphasize the “common threads” among us in demonstrations, courses and workshops. We’d minimize differences by saying that our work may take different forms, yet we share a basic philosophy. But it’s become more and more difficult to find commonality. The divergent work under the single name “Dalcroze” has confused people and created counter-productive infighting, limiting the strength and reach of the method in any form.

For these reasons, MusiKinesis must clarify its distinctive identity in order to stem confusion, free itself from the weight of other people’s work, and continue developing along the broader lines of Jaques-Dalcroze’s philosophy.
 

The Second Hurdle: Possibilities and Roots

I get a lot of email from teachers (happily), but one I received several years ago stayed with me. A teacher wrote asking about specific MusiKinesis workshops or classes. When I said there were none, and told her about my Jaques-Dalcroze Institute and workshops, she replied with disappointment: “I’ve seen other Dalcroze teachers, but MusiKinesis is different – it should be its own thing.” I wasn’t ready to see it, but I could imagine the possibilities, and the thought took root.

Then I worked with a wonderful teacher at the Levine School of Music, Kaja Weeks. Gifted, skilled, intuitive and highly knowledgeable, Kaja told me the Dalcroze philosophy resonated with her, but the piano isn’t her instrument. “But I can teach you to use the piano!” I insisted. She said knew her teaching would always be too limited from the keyboard, and urged me to consider whether MusiKinesis couldn’t utilize other sound sources to lead exercises along the same philosophical lines -- percussion instruments, Orff instruments, recordings? I wasn’t ready to see it, but I could imagine the possibilities, and that thought, too, took root.

And then, hurricane Katrina hit with all its televised, photographed, horrific impact – and it impacted my thinking in a big way. The ivory tower met reality. It connected past with present, and equalized the personal with the professional. The “higher education” I grew up with – literally in campus housing upon the hill where my father was a professor of music – met again with the low-income, minority children at the bottom of that hill who were my friends and classmates by zoning. We never separated, but Katrina violently forced the vision to connect, the impetus to imagine the possibilities, and the courage to force the roots to flower.
 

The Third Hurdle: Reaching Out

Music education may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but I embrace Jaques-Dalcroze’s belief that a sound education in music through movement – integrating ear, mind, body and spirit – can profoundly affect people, especially children. And in our country today, there are many children who desperately need the best music experiences we can provide. This is our contribution to give, and should never be taken lightly.

To create maximum impact on real children in real classrooms, we need to equip teachers with real, practical resources and skills. That means eschewing several models popular today. To explain what we WILL do, we must first explain what we will NOT do, and why.

1. The model of large commercial enterprises. These are easy to use, and obviously successful – for many teachers, they provide a way of getting by. But cookie-cutter, mass-produced packages leave many true, talented and devoted music educators wanting something more. That’s because the lesson ideas are typically so simplistic, they merely skim the surface of music content. Soon enough, children (and administrators, parents, and other teachers) get the idea that music HAS no content, but it merely an entertaining break in the day. The problem is that these products are geared toward a “success” that is defined as “the absence of total failure,” rather than real music education. It can seem like an easy way to go at first, but fall flat in the long run, especially for teachers who aspire to teach real music skills, theory, and literacy – and to have students who respect their subject.

2. The model of popular, now-classic methods. These are the ones every music education major learns. Methodology from other times and places have much to offer, but they were designed for a different time, culture, and student body -- hence the frequent tendency to augment them, alter them, or combine them in an “eclectic curriculum” that dilutes each philosophical foundation in order to make use of their most practical aspects for our own time and culture. The lack of a cohesive, applicable framework makes planning difficult over a long term, while also leading to the frequent question: “What do I do tomorrow?”

3. The model of academic savior. This takes many forms, and I’m not speaking of any one person (but if you’ve ever known one, you’ll know what I’m talking about). When it comes to teaching teachers how to teach children, the phrase “higher education” is a misnomer. There is nothing “higher” than experience in the classroom; so any credible expert in teaching children has had great experience teaching children themselves. Not everyone who’s taught children is an expert; but I dare say every expert has in fact taught children. Research is fine, but experience is vital; theories are fine, but reality is essential; teachers who present performances showcasing their own brilliance may fill you with awe, but not necessarily with applicable ideas to affect, inspire, or feed your teaching. And the answer to all your questions is often that you just need to keep going back for more – ultimately, getting “hooked.”

4. The model of Jaques-Dalcroze Education as almost completely “experiential.” Jaques-Dalcroze wrote that the aim of Eurhythmics was to say “not I know, but I have experienced” – but in my view, he was saying we need to know through experience, not “we don’t really need to know.” His publications show an intense focus on extremely sophisticated music skills, yet a tendency has grown up in America to consider “experience” an end in itself, in a focus that leans more toward music therapy than music education, in my view. In this approach, lessons are organized more around a psycho-emotional process, and less around concrete music concepts; more around affect, and less around effect. “Feelings” and “expression” are fine, along the path – but the path leads toward their convergence with concrete knowledge of music theory and skills, as I see it. (Not surprisingly, many who work this way avoid the traditional involvement of the piano, do not use the Dalcroze solfege methodology, and/or need to bring in separate movement teachers!) And this nebulous approach to the method has left people less able to pin down exactly what the method is, and yet more likely to believe that anything at all involving music and movement is somehow “Dalcroze.”

5. The model of Jaques-Dalcroze Education as a strict, historical package imported full-strength and unmodified into modern America. I confess, this has been my approach. We have maintained highly-sophisticated solfege requirements, including advanced skills and exercises peculiar to this method, and fixed-do in a moveable-do country. We have maintained advanced keyboard harmony and piano improvisation skills, including figured basslines. We have put our students through all sorts of rigorous music training for their own skills, in the belief that we could connect those skills with practical pedagogical studies and a philosophical basis, and voila – ideal teachers! I believe we started with a fundamental error: whereas Jaques-Dalcroze began the reality of where his students were, we began not with the reality of where OUR students were, but with the old, foreign ideas of where HIS were. In the process, we’ve turned away too many creative, motivated teachers with true gifts that can’t be taught – love of children, devotion to their work, and motivation to find new inspiration.

A century ago, Jaques-Dalcroze decided it was time for something new. Here and now, we decide it again: it’s time for something new.
 

The Fourth Hurdle: A New Design

The new direction of MusiKinesis is to maintain the principles of Jaques-Dalcroze’s educational philosophy and positive social conscience, by meeting the needs of contemporary teachers in our own time and place, as he did in his own time and place.

The new design begins by streamlining techniques for maximum applicability. No longer will teachers be left in the dark, wondering how to apply these principles to their own work; no longer will they feel unable to utilize our ideas within their own classrooms. MusiKinesis will combine the three branches of Dalcroze education into a compact, usable format with an eye toward giving the best education possible to children – guiding, and never rejecting or demeaning, their teachers.

Streamlining: Our focus is on skills that music teachers can obtain and use. Skills such as singing the do-do scales and realizing figured basslines, for example, will be omitted for basic MusiKinesis training and deferred for optional further studies. They will not be required for learning teaching techniques, strategies, and ideas in MusiKinesis.

Concretizing: MusiKinesis will provide specific materials, formulas, and models. The old idea that it’s “dangerous” to provide exercises is now gone. Teachers will not be left wondering how to apply ideas presented. Pedagogy will be based on specific formulas for lesson plans, and teachers will learn how to use them to teach specific concepts, plugging in relevant movement exercises, songs, theory games, compositions, creative movement stories, etc. to create solid lesson plans of their own with ease.

Broadening Sound Sources: Rather than relying on piano improvisation from the teacher, MusiKinesis will provide ways of involving other instruments, vocalization, compositions, and even recordings.

Broadening Techniques: The teacher’s course will include special lessons in applications of percussion technique, vocal technique, dance technique, and more – with specific activities to incorporate into your teaching.

Creativity: MusiKinesis seeks to inspire teachers’ own creativity, with the idea that creativity thrives when given certain parameters or guidelines. We will work with specific formulas, formats, outlines, and other structures, guiding collaborations to enable teachers to discover just how creative they can be when their thoughts are focused!

Removing barriers: We want to remove barriers of cost along with other hindrances to accessibility. MusiKinesis will provide affordable tuition, ease of registration, and discounted housing – and we’ll strive to pack in practical ideas in a way that makes every second of the course invaluable.

There’ll be more discussion in future articles. Meanwhile, stay tuned to the Summer 2006 page for updated details!