Performing Arts

In Music this semester, we’ve been exploring the driving question, ‘What music would I like if I lived in Asia?” We discussed the songs that are our favourites now and agreed that if we went to live in Asia, we would probably still like these. We also listened to a range of songs from Asian countries such as Korea, India, Japan and China. Some of these songs were from the top of the charts in those countries (popular music), some were traditional, some were children’s songs and some were anthems that we might hear during the Olympic games. We expressed and discussed our preferences, describing the music and how it made us feel.

We explored ways that we could perform these songs that were appropriate to the students’ abilities. These included playing along with instruments or recycled materials, using body percussion, dancing, humming or singing, playing structured games, keeping the beat, copying the rhythm, playing an ostinato and following a pictorial score.

Classes chose a couple of favourite songs to answer the driving question and chose how they wanted to perform these songs. Interestingly, quite a few classes chose to use body percussion for at least one of their songs. We practised and videoed our performances which were then shown at our culminating event last week. Some students even volunteered to be videoed introducing the songs!

A few weeks ago, our visiting performer, Benji, presented the show, “Beats ‘n’ Pieces.” He played music from a variety of countries including China and Australia. Some of these songs were played on a traditional Chinese instrument, the ruan. His performance fit in very nicely with our unit of work.