Many music educators view activism through the gaze and experience of the U.S. civil rights movement and the protests of the 1960s. This article examines how two Brooklyn, New York-based music educators engage in activism in their school communities by centering student identity and cultivating joyful musical experiences. The authors share their…

Creating accessible events is a pressing issue for many music organisations. In the United States, the term accessibility has strong ties to disability, and it is an important concept because what is deemed accessible directly impacts who is included and excluded from music experiences. Music Community Lab (MCL) runs a series of events in New York…

The cypher, a circle of MCs improvising rhymes in a collaborative jam session, is a relatively unexplored topic in hip hop. Through its focus on community and reciprocity, the cypher represents a crucial nexus of sociability that enables researchers to examine the shifting positionalities and communicative practices of audience members and…

Christopher Small (1998) famously explored the role of the performance venue in framing the music experiences of audience members. While Small observed how audiences consume music in the classical symphony hall, we might also consider how performance venues frame global music experiences as well. In this article, I suggest that considering the…

Music is a way of representing the patterns of frequencies and vibrational relationships--and at St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf, it is used it to promote language learning and transform students' educational experiences. Traditionally defined through the medium of sound, music has been seen as an approach that excludes deaf and hard of…

In this New York City, New York-based study, we made use of a Critical Cycle of Mixtape Creation (CCMC) intervention to examine a Bangladeshi high school student's understanding of justice, and the impact of injustice on his well-being, through his creation of and reflection on original hip-hop song lyrics. The student participated in the CCMC…

Once referred to as "the most maligned musical instrument on earth," the harmonica holds an important historical place in music education as an instrument around which bands were formed, solo and ensemble competitions were held, and in some cases, careers were born. Much of this activity centered itself on city recreation programs as…

The aim of this study is to compare the activities of Kabalevsky and Bernstein--two musicians who made a significant contribution to the musical education of the younger generation, reveals the principles, methods, forms of educational work and covers the subject of television programmes. In particular, the pedagogical and musical-enlightenment…

The New York City Labor Chorus completed its 25th year in June of 2017. This paper comes after gathering of data for an ethnographic study of the chorus during the entire year, beginning September of 2016. The researcher had been a chorus member for five years and continued to be a participant while collecting data. This paper focuses on…

The purpose of our study was to examine how hacking -- as discussed and displayed by participants of Monthly Music Hackathon NYC -- could inform making music education practices more accessible and inclusive, if at all, for people with disabilities. Free and open to the public, Monthly Music Hackathon NYC hosts non-competitive community-based…

This study involved a secondary analysis of data collected across the 2016-2017 academic year to determine the impact on students' social and emotional well-being of a new hip-hop lyricism course implemented by a school counselor. The new course introduced hip-hop and spoken word therapy into a specially designed classroom curriculum to meet the…

Historically rooted in Black and Latino youth subcultures of New York City, Hip-Hop emerged as a form of sociocultural expression by which young people, particularly those socially and culturally marginalized by race and class, voice their discontent, anger, and struggles, make sense of their social realities, and exercise resistance. In a White,…

Feedback is crucial to students' growth as musicians. Fortunately, the teacher is not the sole source of feedback in the music classroom. Under the right conditions, students can provide actionable feedback to themselves and each other. This article showcases the work of three elementary music specialists who have innovatively incorporated…

ENGLISH AND PUERTO RICAN LYRICS, INCLUDING MUSIC, OF 14 PUERTO RICAN CHRISTMAS SONGS ARE PRESENTED. THE SONGS CAN BE TAUGHT IN ELEMENTARY OR SECONDARY SCHOOLS. FOLK SONGS, FOLK DANCES, PRAISES OF THE CHRIST CHILD AND OF THE THREE WISE KINGS, AND RETELLINGS OF THE CHRISTMAS STORY CONSTITUTE THE REPERTOIRE. BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND THE MEANINGS OF…

Evaluated is a summer project, funded by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I in New York City. A group of musically talented high school students from the city's poverty areas prepared a program stressing the musical contributions of minority groups. This program was presented at elementary school assemblies. Assessment of…