The Grateful Dead always had a folkie/Americana aspect, but in the early 1970s they leaned hard into country music, and it suited them. I found this song to be pretty cringe as a teenaged Deadhead in New York City, but it grew on me. The tune is named for a 1940s radio Western, which sounds …
Tag Archives: America
Happy inauguration day
I don’t love the settler colonialist lyrics, but I do love this arrangement: And while I don’t love the song, I do think Lady Gaga sang it as well as I’ve heard it sung.
Let’s ditch “The Star-Spangled Banner” and make “Lean On Me” our national anthem instead
Over the summer, with the BLM protests raging, my fellow music educators were doing a lot of soul-searching about the more problematic items in the traditional repertoire. The conversation inevitably turned toward “The Star-Spangled Banner,” with some questions about its appropriateness as a national anthem. Francis Scott Key owned slaves, and the third verse of …
The racial politics of music education
In the face of ongoing protests against police brutality in the US, I’m seeing some music educators fretting about the relevance of their work. I believe that Eurocentric music education can validate and perpetuate white supremacy, and that our responsibility is to dismantle it. Here’s an excerpt of my dissertation in progress. I hope you …
Lil Nas X and the racial politics of country music
As of this writing, the biggest song in America is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. It might also be the most interesting pop song of the 21st century so far. “Old Town Road” defies genre categorization. Like Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” it sits entangled in a vast musical rhizome. Lil Nas X calls it …
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Mr Ethan, I want to hear you rap
I’m currently working with Techrow Fund to develop an afterschool music technology program called The Producer Club. We’re doing the pilot program at New Design Middle School in Harlem with a group each of sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders. Techrow had approached me to teach, but I suggested that, rather than hiring a middle-aged …
Separating children from their parents at the border is morally wrong
Call your representatives, especially if they’re Republicans. Demand that this stop. “But what about Obama?” He’s not the president anymore. “But what about the laws?” This isn’t a law, it’s a policy instituted very recently, which can be reversed in an instant by Sessions or Trump. “But what about illegal immigration?” No harm done by …
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Racism is not over and America’s prisons prove it
A gentleman named Myron Magnet, whose muttonchop sideburns have to be seen to be believed, has this to say: What is keeping down American blacks today is not racism, oppression, or lack of opportunity. That’s over. Black Americans are now free. What holds them back is the ideology of “authentic blackness”—a black identity rooted in …
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This Is America
If you’re the kind of person who reads my blog, then by now you’ve probably seen the video for Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” If you haven’t seen it, watch now. Be warned that it’s upsetting. Donald Glover, a.k.a. Childish Gambino, is best known as a comedian, a writer, and an actor. He’s an intelligent …
Teaching whiteness in music class
Update: evidence that racism is an urgent problem. Further update: the online alt-right has some feelings about this post. Music education is in a ”crisis of irrelevancy” (Reimer, 2009, p. 398). Enrollment in school music has declined precipitously for the past few decades. Budget cuts alone can not explain this decline (Kratus, 2007). School music …