Paralysis to Catalyst: Problematizing Repertoire and Teaching Towards Collective Action
Session Abstract: As we live through a time of racial reckoning in the United States, choral conductor/teachers have grappled with meaningful responses in our programming, in what our students experience in the choral classroom, and the impacts of public performance. Teaching professionals as well as singers in their ensembles struggle to understand what music should be performed, leading in some cases to paralysis over singing music outside one’s lived experience. This session is an honest examination of what it means to be a catalyst in the sphere of choral performance and music education. We examine a potent point of connection for advancing shared understandings of our differences as well as our commonalities-what we sing and how we prepare singers and listeners for the work. Using the theoretical frameworks of culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogies, we will frame a process for difficult conversations in choir and our communities at large. Examples will be shared and demonstrated through musical works, including Andrea Ramsey’s Suffrage Cantata, Zanaida Robles's No Fairytale Here , Melissa Dunphy’s Survival Plan of Sorts, and Mari Esabel Valverde’s “When Thunder Comes.” We walk into the messiness of our own fears of appropriation and desire to honor other’s stories and model talking points and teaching strategies for helping our singers and communities understand our process for bringing such works and stories to life.
References for Session:
Allsup, R. E. (2020). ON THE PERILS OF WAKENING OTHERS. In I. M. Yob & E. R. Jorgensen (Eds.), Humane Music Education for the Common Good (pp. 29–39). Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxcrxmm.5
Lind, V. L., & McKoy, C. L. (2016). Culturally responsive teaching in music education: From understanding to application. Routledge.
Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world Teachers College Press.
Rinholm, H., & Varkøy, Ø. (2020). MUSIC EDUCATION FOR THE COMMON GOOD? BETWEEN HUBRIS AND RESIGNATION: A Call for Temperance. In I. M. Yob & E. R.
Jorgensen (Eds.), Humane Music Education for the Common Good (pp. 40–53). Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxcrxmm.6
mirabai ensemble
Michigan State University
The mirabai ensemble was founded in 2017 by Sandra Snow. We aim to enhance the artistic expectations of women’s choral singing by connecting powerful music of women, past and present; and performing, commissioning, and recording new and innovative musics that express the rich emotional terrain of a woman’s life. Our work takes place through performances and recordings, educational outreach, and the commissioning of new works. Examples of outreach include national leadership retreats for choral educators and an annual mirabai young scholar's program that identifies eight HS women from across the U.S. with an early interest in teaching and pairs them with mirabai artists. Upcoming commissioning projects align with our deib initiatives, centering composition by women of color. We have also widened representation in the mirabai young scholar's cohort for 2022, another deib goal. We recognize the membership of the organization does not yet reflect the changing demographics of our nation and that systemic and institutional racism has left singers and teachers of color out of the academy. As a result, we need to grow our membership with this as a priority. Our rehearsal and performance model seeks inclusive practices and representation of multi-musical practices are a priority. As passionate advocates for music as a form of peacemaking, mirabai seeks to engage audiences in meaningful explorations of musics, texts, and conversation around contemporary issues of our time.
Sandra Snow
Michigan State University
As conductor, pedagogue, and scholar, Sandra Snow is widely acknowledged as one who brings singers of all ages and abilities to artful performance through an understanding of the music and its context in the world around them. As Professor of Choral Conducting/ Music Education at Michigan State University, the Mosaic treble ensemble has appeared at ACDA conventions at state, regional, and national levels. In 2017 Snow created mirabai, a project-based professional women’s chorus, with a focus on educational outreach in the form of leadership retreats and mentoring of high school women interested in choral music education.
