Global SchoolNet: International CyberFair: 8: Local Music and Art Forms

Category 8: Local Music and Art Forms

Task
Content Standards
Learning Objectives
Discussion Questions
Starter Activities
Project Examples

A: Task:

Design a website and/or create a video story that showcases local music and musicians or art forms that are important elements of the community experience (e.g. dance, festivals, ceremonies, parades, sculpture, painting, crafts).

The theme for CyberFair 2024 is COLLABORATE & Unite!

Let's unite to protect our communities, our environment, our culture, our health, our animals, and our future.

"In collaboration we find strength, support, and the power to overcome any challenge. Magic happens when we collaborate with an open heart and a shared vision." ~Unknown

B: Content Standards:

As outlined in the National Standards for Arts Education:

Students should be able to communicate at a basic level in the four arts disciplines—dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts. This includes knowledge and skills in the use of the basic vocabularies, materials, tools, techniques, and intellectual methods of each arts discipline.
Students should be able to communicate proficiently in at least one art form, including the ability to define and solve artistic problems with insight, reason, and technical proficiency.
Students should be able to develop and present basic analyses of works of art from structural, historical, and cultural perspectives, and from combinations of those perspectives. This includes the ability to understand and evaluate work in the various arts disciplines.
Students should have an informed acquaintance with exemplary works of art from a variety of cultures and historical periods, and a basic understanding of historical development in the arts disciplines, across the arts as a whole, and within cultures.
Students should be able to relate various types of arts knowledge and skills within and across the arts disciplines. This includes mixing and matching competencies and understandings in art-making, history and culture, and analysis in any arts-related project.
National Standards for Arts Education, Learn more.

C: Learning Objectives:

Students will understand how music and other art forms play an important part in creating community.
Students will list local music and art forms, musicians and artists and explain they're significance to the community.
Students will take an active role in documenting and preserving their local culture.
Students will better understand their community's history by tracing a timeline of it's cultural heritage.

D: Discussion Questions:

What are the origins of local musical traditions?
Is the music or art form from your community part of a rural or urban tradition?
How is local music part of the community experience: festivals, history, holidays, religion, family, education, story-telling, and politics?
Does each member of your community participate in its music and art, or are performances solely for individuals or groups?
What local music or art forms have garnered attention outside your community?
Does the music of your community use language or colloquialisms that are particular to your area?
Can the local music you've identified stand alone or is it part of a celebration, dance, or ceremony?
Is your community actively preserving their music and culture?

E. Suggested Starter Activities:

View past projects produced by students in this category.
Music and culture are indispensable parts of the community experience. Each community maintains its own songs, instruments, dances, art forms and styles of expression. It is a major part of who we are. It reminds us of where we're from and where we're going. By learning what role both music and culture play in their communities, students better understand their diverse environments. Students also gain insights into their cultural history as well as take an active role in the cultural documenting of their communities.
List and classify the different types of music or art forms in your community.
Attend local cultural performances. Listen and watch for qualities which make that cultural event particular to your community.
Name and identify the different types of instruments and tools used by artists in your community and determine if they're a product of a local tradition. Demonstrate how these instruments or tools are used. Discuss how these instruments are made and what resources and materials were used in their creation. Do they require specialized knowledge? Can anyone participate or is performance limited to those who have had specific training?
Compare the different types of music in your community and determine if there are any recurrent themes in the music you're identifying (history, myths, culture, social or political struggle).
Look for similarities and differences between the music of your community and popular music played at a national level. Decide which music speaks more closely to your everyday experiences, and why.
Analyze and interpret musical factors that have helped shape your community.
Create a catalog of community culture which includes recordings, photographs, reviews and interviews.
Create a dictionary of terms which define expressions, instruments and styles that are particular to your community.
Interview local artists and musicians. Learn how long they've been involved in music, dance or art and what were the factors which lead them in that direction. This would also be a good opportunity to identify the influences of each individual artist. Who were their teachers? Whose styles helped shape their own?
To better understand the extent of music's role in the identity of your community, create a calendar of local holidays, festivals and celebrations and then list the types of music and songs which are part of each activity.
Musical styles are rarely created in a vacuum. Most music is a combination of a number of different sources. Trace the history and create a timeline of local musical traditions to identify the diverse influences that have helped shape the music that is performed in your community today.
Determine how music and art both create and involve the community.