Music as Pedagogy, UDL, and Nostalgia

It is a long weekend here and I debated not writing a blog today, but then I was consumed with music yesterday and thoughts of the interconnectedness of music and pedagogy and music as pedagogy. I have written on here before (links to the post from 2015) that I used to have a radio show in undergrad and it was pretty much a formative experience. It created a bit of routine in the emotional chaos that I was living at the time, and it really allowed me to explore music as learning space, as healing space, and as connection space.

I find myself craving these spaces now which is why I delved deep into the early 90s catalogue of tunes that were standards for my show. I then created a post on Twitter last night asking for folks favourite bands and songs from around that time and the response was fabulous. I found myself dancing around the living room, queueing up a playlist of amazing things I had not heard in a long time. So if you participated in this last night, thank you, and if you still want to participate please do, because I want to hear about the songs I may not know about.

This connection to music has always been there for me even though I cannot dare say I am musically inclined. No one in my family plays an instrument, and I desperately wanted to learn piano as a kid but it never happened because of linguistic reasons (the piano teachers in town only spoke French, and bill101 Quebec was not fun for a kid who went to English school) and also money. But, I did listen to the radio a lot. I would cherish the nights when the wind and clouds were just right and by some miracle I would get fuzzy AM from Toronto or even Buffalo. English radio was such a treat for me. I would save money from babysitting jobs and buy cassettes and I honestly still have most of these here with me today (though I sadly don't have anything to play them on and I need to figure that out). 

One of my favourite memories as a teen is this thing I used to do with a close friend of mine at the time. We would give each other audio letters on cassettes. We did not simply speak into the mic on our boomboxes and record, nope, we would use the double cassette deck feature and find words in lyrics of songs, record that word, and string sentences together that way. It was time consuming and fabulous. The end product was probably a 4-5minute letter, but it took almost a day to put together. Lucky for us the guy she liked was named Johnny so I got a lot of use out of my Red Hot Chili Peppers Mother's Milk cassette which was well worn at "Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky."

I reflect on this now at a time where there is so much pedagogical possibility for mixed modality creation, and how much working with those tapes and songs was teaching me about communication, clarity, and also working with the clunky technology I had. It was UDL as late 1980s-early 1990s praxis. It allowed me to share my authentic experience, it helped me express emotions and process ideas, it provided alternatives to textual information (no more creatively folded letters passed in class or placed in lockers), and had me exploring tools that made me very excited to be part of the campus radio station when I moved away from home and onto campus.

This nostalgia for my time at CSCR is nostalgia for a time of creativity. In education, the pandemic has definitely allowed us to be creative, however, that creativity may not necessarily have been coupled with the empowerment that makes creative ventures deeply rewarding for some. There is a difference between being creative because of necessity or danger, and being creative because it is driven by passion. Passion for something, be it music, acting, writing, cannot be taught. Learning that has a positive emotional and geographical connection, the kind of feeling I get when I hear "Temple of Love" by The Sisters of Mercy and am transported right back to that dj booth with grey acoustic foam, is the kind of embodied learning experience we should hope for learners. Or when I hear "The house of house" by Cherrymoon Trax that takes me to a completely different geographical yet same chronological space. 

The kind of connection I mention here can be achieved in many different modalities. I am seeing some fabulous blackout poetry and found poems happening right now that could allow for different ways of applying concepts from classes in a meaningful way. Or creating tactile maps to recreate a space that brings the learner comfort (I would actually love a tactile map of my thinking hill from back home). If there was a way to channel the nostalgia that we have for the thing that resonated, and bring it to learning spaces, imagine the possibilities, and the opportunity to revisit those creative feelings anew. Let's try it, and if you do let me know what you come up with as an activity or assignment. And if you have some tunes to share with me, please do. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!