[MUSIC] Some of the most provocative writing that I've read on music education's perceived bias towards Western art music is by Ethan Hein. Including his master's thesis, which I'm going to link to below this video, and a recent chapter for the Oxford University Press Handbook of Technology and Music Education. Hein is a producer. He is a lecturer at New York university and Monte Claire State University, and he teaches music education, production and technology. So would you go as far as to say that classroom music is actually irrelevant to students? No, there is a percentage of people who really love classical music, and for whom it connects to them personally and emotionally. And that is great. I would hate to take that away from anyone. But, just as a statistical matter, the majority of kids don't connect to it emotionally. I personally think that it's lovely, but it just doesn't grab me the way that John Coltrane does or the way that Run DMC does or The Beatles or Michael Jackson or any of a million other things. And I'm glad to have learned about it, but if my only exposure was Handel and Mozart, I probably would not have ended up as a musician. You wrote a blog post, I think recently, about what draws you to music from the African diaspora. So, let me define what I mean by that. That just means that the African diaspora is all of the music made by all of the descendants of people brought to the Americas by the Atlantic slave trade, which includes all popular music. Rock, hip hop, funk, EDM, even country is pretty African. The musical values of traditional African music is pretty different from the values of European music from previous centuries, right? A lot more emphasis on rhythm, a lot less on harmony, a lot more repetition, but for the vast majority of people in most western societies, that's what music is, right? Where would you have music teachers start? I would start in the present with what is popular and familiar. And then work my way outwards and backwards. So if you're going to talk about Kanye West, talk about his immediate influences, talk about Daft Punk and other techno artists, and then go back to craft work, then go back to the classical minimalists. Talk about a few samples, some soul album, then go back to the original soul album and go from there to gospel, and the blues and ragtime. I feel like you can pretty much pick up any one of those threads, pick one of his many songs that does actually have a chord progression and say here is some other music that uses this same sequence of chords. For example this scene from Beethoven. So that very first class, it's 101 on the curriculum now, Kanye West 101, how does the music teacher begin that class? Is there a listening exercise, a worksheet to fill in? Yeah, definitely starting from the recordings, there is, in music education, we do a thing where we start with the smallest components of music. We start with what is a quarter note? What is a C? What is a D? But those are not actually the simplest components of music, right? It would be like starting chemistry class at the level like in electrons. In chemistry class you start with like water in air. So with these familiar substances that are actually compound, right? And then, over time, you get into, well, water is actually hydrogen and oxygen and oxygen is a bunch of protons and a bunch of neutrons. And I feel like, the way the pop musicians and the way that I learned is, you learn actual songs and then only much later do you decompose them into their smallest constituent parts. Because it takes some sophistication to be able to do that. The traditionally trained educators have a lot to offer to the bedroom producers. But the bedroom producers have a lot to offer the classical tribe. The classical tribe doesn't really know its way around the recording studio. And the recording studio at this point, pretty much is coextensive with music making for a lot of us. So yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity for a two-way information exchange. And that always makes for a more lively classroom anyway, right? Ethan, thank you so much for joining us. It's a really special thing to have you in the MOOC. It's such a pleasure. [MUSIC]
