Music educators seeking new methods for imparting musical culture will study musical traditions from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe in a special summer workshop offered jointly by the University of Washington School of Music and Smithsonian Institution Folkways.
The Smithsonian Folkways Certification Workshop in World Pedagogy, set for June 28 through July 2 at the School of Music, will provide teachers with tools and techniques for helping their students learn about culture through songs, stories, movement, instrumental music, and dance.
"Teachers preparing musical studies for their children and youth will enjoy participation and listening analysis of music from A to Z featuring artist-musicians such as Ustad Mohammad Omar, Dewey Balfa, Nati Cano, Lucinda Williams, Rahim Alhaj, and Bill Monroe," says School of Music Professor Patricia Campbell, who serves on the board of the Folkways division of the museum. "Smithsonian Folkways is a rich archive of sound recordings within the national museum, and the course we offer in collaboration with the archive will allow participants to explore the audio recordings and video documentation of a wide array of musicians and their musical expressions."
Atesh Sonneborn from the Smithsonian Institution and Kedmon Mapana, a noted expert in the Wagogo musical tradition of East Africa, are among the faculty for the workshop, which also includes a number of School of Music faculty and affiliates, including Music Education professor Patricia Campbell, who will feature the music of Bulgaria and North India, Ethnomusicology head Shannon Dudley, featuring music from Trinidad and the Caribbean, and UW affiliates Marisol Berrios-Miranda (music of Puerto Rico), Amanda Soto (conjunto and son jarocho), Christopher Roberts (Turkey, Uganda, and children's music), and Peter Park (Korean percussion).
Participants in the course will receive university credit and documentation from the Smithsonian Institution that certifies their specialized study in world music pedagogy.
"We have the good fortune of this special link between the UW School of Music and Smithsonian Institution's Folkways," Campbell says. "Participants in the workshop will come away with model curricular experiences to deliver to their young students and a compendium of resources from which to draw all year long in developing musical skills and understandings. We are thrilled to announce this important affiliation."