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For this project, I was interested in knowing how people use music in their lives, so I asked my interviewees questions like these. Slide 2 The teacher I interviewed is Dr. Valeska Cabrera. She received her doctorate at the University of Salamanca, in Spain, and I met her last year when I joined her community choir. She studied singing and classical guitar at university. I was lucky enough to be able to interview all 5 of my roommates, plus one of their boyfriends. They're all in their 20s, all in different majors, and they all grew up in North America. None of them have any musical training outside of music classes in elementary school. I also interviewed my parents and my grandmother. My parents are in their 60s and grew up in Chile in the 1960s and 70s. My mom took guitar lessons as part of her Early Childhood Education degree, and my dad tried to teach himself guitar, but got frustrated and dropped it. My grandma is in her 90s, and grew up in Chile in the 1930s. She has no formal musical training, but has a deep appreciation for music. Slide 3 Before getting into the deeper portion of my presentation, I thought I would share some fun facts I discovered. When I asked my grandma (who, I will remind you, has no formal music education) what kind of music she likes to listen to, the first thing she mentioned was "Well, I really like Chopin polonaises...", so that took me completely by surprise. My dad went to middle school with a famous Chilean composer! He told me that he never did his music homework, but the teachers gave him good marks anyways because they knew he had the talent. When one of my roommates brought up that she hated country music, everyone else responded "Oh my god, me too!". However, when I was talking to my mom, she went out of her way to mention the nice country song she heard on the radio the other day. Much in the same way, one of my roommates mentioned being an Avril Lavigne fan when she was younger and all my other roommates reminisced together for a couple of minutes. Slide 4 So I wanted to address this big question: What is music for? The answer I got from every one of my interviewees is that they use it for background music, and to affect their mood and energy. Now this is something common, we all put music on when we're exercising, or studying, or doing chores. However, I wanted to go a little deeper, so I asked my roommates if they could think of any other ways they use music in their lives. They thought about it and couldn't come up with anything. So I thought to myself "There's no way that's it...". Slide 5 I looked back through my interview with my teacher and I found this quote: “A choir has the capacity to bring people together…to make them learn something new that can improve their self-esteem, make them understand the feeling of teamwork and have them appreciate something beautiful that they all made.” And I realized that this was another use for music: Music as a Community Activity. We might all know what that's like because of our experiences in ensembles, but it wasn't so clear to my roommates. Slide 6 Something else that came up in my interviews with my parents and grandmother was using music as a way to remember old memories. My parents kept bringing up this particular genre of music: "Musica del Recuerdo", which translates roughly to "Oldies". My dad said that he would put on music from his youth while he exercised and he would get lost in memories for the entire time. My grandmother also brought up music as a way to combat loneliness. I'll leave you with this quote of hers, which hit me kind of hard: “…[music is] necessary for me to keep going, especially now that me and your aunt are always alone…I fill the house with music.” Slide 7 Thinking back to Avril Lavigne and how she apparently played a role in all my roommates lives, I remembered something that my dad had mentioned, which was the idea of a musical idol. This could be any artist you look up to, and, especially when you're young, these are people that can guide your values, influence your style, and dictate your social circle. Avril Lavigne may not be the reason they all moved in together, but it could have been the reason they would have played together at recess back in the day. I also thought that music as a political tool could also be a point of interest. My parents grew up in a time of political unrest in their country, and in their teen years, music class was dedicated to listening to party-approved artists. The teachers would frame the class as something they would never have been allowed to do when the old party was in power, and this kind of manipulation really confused and scared my mom for a while. Slide 8 In an effort to bring all this information full circle, I thought about how these different uses of music could play a role in my roommates lives. For music as a community activity, I thought about the music festivals they go to, and the music they listen to at parties and when they go out. This may not be the same kind of bonding activity my music teacher had in mind, but it still plays a role in their bonds as friends. For music related to memories, I've got this quote from my roommate: “These three songs will make me cry, every time” To me this means that they're already using music as a way to remember "the good times", they just don't quite think of it that way yet. And finally, because I already touched on the importance of musical role models in the last slide, here's another picture of Avril Lavigne... Slide 9 That's all I have time for! Thank you!
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The role model I chose to interview is Dr. Valeska Cabrera. She’s originally from Chile, she did her Bachelors and Masters at the Universidad Catolica de Chile, then did her Doctorate in Musicology at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. I first met her a year ago, in November 2018. She was studying Choral Conducting at the University of Toronto and though she was the Assistant Conductor for a couple of the University choirs as well as a church choir, she was looking to start a choir of her own. It would focus on Ibero-American music and most of the members would be Hispanic. The choir’s first rehearsal took place in January 2019 and I was amazed by the variety of people that had joined. Our youngest member was in middle school and our oldest members were retired, many of the members couldn’t read music, and while most of them were Hispanic, we had a couple of people who had joined to practice their Spanish. In the span of several months, Valeska formed us all into a fully functioning choir. I was inspired as I watched her handle every problem with grace and patience and compel us all to do our artistic best. Agora Choir had our first official concert in August 2019, and though I was excited to begin my studies at Western in September, I was also very sad to be leaving. The future of the choir was uncertain, since Valeska wasn’t sure whether she’d be going back to Chile the next year. I was delighted to see a poster advertising the choir being passed around Facebook in October and decided to go and visit during reading week.
I met with Valeska before the choir’s rehearsal, and then stayed to sing and watch. I asked the interview questions in English and she responded in Spanish, since that’s the language she’s most comfortable with. When I asked her to describe what she does, she said that she wasn’t really a teacher, but that being a choir director certainly had an element of pedagogy to it. Going into the interview, I was particularly interested in getting a perspective on music education from someone who didn’t explicitly study it. It was lovely talking with her, and there were a few concepts she touched on that resonated with me. Throughout our conversation, she described the process of learning as a wholesome, inclusive, and ongoing process. She believes that everyone learns through the process of teaching, not just the members of the choir, but herself as well. She values active participation from the choir members, which is something she hadn’t really experienced before she came to study in Canada. She describes her previous choir experiences in Chile and Spain as “rigid” where “the choir members only received and repeated information, they didn’t process it.”. Watching her in rehearsal, she seemed to actively work against this rigidity by employing activities that engaged every member of the choir and always asking for feedback whenever she tried something new. She is a big fan of using physical gestures to strengthen concepts. For example, she has a series of hand motions she uses to explain how you should form vowels in your mouth, and frequently has the choir outline the phrases of the music they sing with their hands. I found out during the interview that she’d been attending different children’s choir rehearsals in order to learn more about teaching in a choral setting. This speaks to her commitment to growing as a conductor and educator in order to bring out the best in her musicians. She believes that music making can bring about many benefits in a community, particularly because of its “capacity to bring people together…to make them learn something new that can improve their self-esteem, make them understand the feeling of team work and have them appreciate something beautiful that they all made.” This view of music from a social and psychological angle as well as from a trained musician’s perspective makes it easy to see why it’s important to teach music in schools and community centers, and to make it as accessible as possible. By shifting the focus to the act of music making rather than the results, it also puts into perspective what is important when conducting a group of people with so many different levels of experience. Something I’ve always admired about her is her patience. She approaches every rehearsal with an attitude of positivity and progress, even when people haven’t practiced or are late or absent. It doesn’t matter if there are 6 people in rehearsal or 30 – I noted the same patience and determination each time. Curious about how she does it, I asked her what motivates her to keep going. She said that “perseverance is key in these cases.” In Chile, music isn’t considered a serious career, so in order to get work and build a positive musical environment, she had to be determined and really believe in what she was doing. She also always keeps in mind that she's working with people who love to sing but have no formal training. The patience is an important part of her teaching approach, and I've seen firsthand the positive impact it has on the members of the choir. My favorite quote from the interview is from when I asked her about her goals when working with a new group. She responded, “My goal is to facilitate a learning process that stimulates each person to give their best based on their own experience.”. I don’t have much experience teaching in groups, but Valeska’s beautifully concise philosophy is one that I will keep in mind should I ever have the chance. I am very fortunate to have met someone like her and am thankful for the opportunity to get to know her. I look forward to seeing what she does in the future and to attending Agora Choir’s future concerts. |
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