Alex Adams

Yeah, same experience, when I moved to a place with no seasons suddenly my seasonal depression went away.

100% we’ve been listening to great songwriters before each class in our music tech songwriting unit this semester and I’ve been evangelizing.

This is a very northeastern/maine-y opinion. “

Yes, we’re having fun but there’s no need to get all worked up.”

Your life is worse off because too many white people hate Black people.

A man on horseback with a sombrero is outlined in silhouette against an orange ofrenda

A large sculpture of a female skeleton playing a guitar

An intensely orange ofrenda adorned with skulls and marigolds

The world might be stupid but there are still amazing things and people in it. I went to a dia de los muertos celebration last night and there was a tremendous amount of music, color, and joy. Traditions and culture are important.

As a result of the central priority shifting the curriculum and teaching shift and change toward that aim.

It’s interesting how we understand and enact our values. I wonder how lifelong musicianship in a public school classroom is not only a different idea but serves a different purpose.

Instead of centering the terms of scholastic musical tradition and reproduction, which demands BOC models or taking traditions like rock music and schoolifying them, aligning for a students own musical agency asks flexibility, space for exploration and an orientation to a self directed musical life.

I’ve been working with a private school’s k-12 music program.

It is really interesting to see the possibilities that open up for centering independent lifelong musicianship on students’ terms in that space.

Taking Stock Sharing real world problems with students for real world learning

New: Reflecting on real world teaching problems through solving them together- a reflection from some recent music teacher education classroom experiences.

As a music teacher I think about this all the time.

Sometimes the best question to ask isn’t “how can we do better?” but “should we be doing this at all?”

Log Cabin Republicans Disrupted Yasmin Williams’s Kennedy Center Performance - Washingtonian Staffers say center president Ric Grenell's office set aside passes for the group, which booed and heckled the musician.

Ric Grenell, who runs the Kennedy Center, appears to have set aside tickets for hecklers to disrupt the K-Center performance of an artist who got in a heated exchange with him months ago:

To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.

@hankgreen.bsky.social Which way did people turn things before clocks were invented?

We use the terms clockwise and anti-clockwise now but clocks are not a natural thing? How did people refer to those kinds of rotational movement before clocks?

If we only spend time teaching Tristan, we're short changing all the students of these future teachers.

I know these things are old, a lot of these students are under 25, but modern music is replete with interlocking references and connections to the real world and real history and real live people.

Understanding these references is as essential as understanding why the Tristan chord is a big deal

Is it important to know the historical facts about the buffalo soldiers AND the importance of Bob Marley and his song about them as a music teacher?

Gershwin, Jazz Standards, Porgy and Bess? Why might those be important to know?

Why would politically engaged hip-hop have engaged them?

For some reason Porgy and Bess and Bob Marley hadn't made the music history cut.

Without that context how could they parse the meaning of the song we're listening to. What it means to draw those references into a new expression. Why go to those sources?

How do these reference connect to history?

Listening to "Ready or Not" by the Fugees today in class. I asked the undergraduates to identify some of the other musical works referenced in the lyrics.

"What is "Porgy and Bess"?, When they say "Buffalo soldier, dreadlocked rasta" what and who are they referencing"

None of them Knew.

Music education could stand to do more thinking and teaching about how music is used for political purposes. Music isn’t always a liberating force. Music is often used to signal membership of an in group. When Trump uses Greenwood they’re both making a musical cultural case about who Americans are.

Trump’s allies now control X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, & TikTok.

They own Fox News, CBS, WaPo, WSJ & NY Post.

They own Sinclair Broadcasting which has 200 tv stations and local news in 100 markets.

“Freedom of speech” is now what Trump and his billionaire pals say it is.

“People espousing antifascist ideology are enemies of the state but don’t you dare call us fascists or we’ll target you with the full force of the state!”

Yeah, there’s a name for that.

Those folks are just fine. Until their own lies start people shooting at them.

It’s also, unfortunately, entirely in line with American myths about individualism, meritocracy, and competition.

When the truth becomes a game, a commodity, an inconvenience we all suffer.

Well, except those who can monetize or leverage confusion and lies to their own advantage.

Being grown means taking on these responsibilities for self and others.

Treating the world like a playing field where you do anything to score, including destroying the ability to know anything, is not responsible. It’s immature and antisocial.

Those in the middle are left without a place to stand and essentially flip a coin about what is true in the world.

This is not sustainable.

We can’t, as individuals, check every fact. We need communities where honesty and good faith efforts to know are the norm.

Often in the name of tolerance of different ideas, people hesitate to call a lie what it is.

This destroys our ability to trust each other to be more or less truthful. We can’t belong in a community of knowers anymore because too many of us either won’t call it out or actively embrace the lies

The community of lies is united and hostile to truth. Facts don’t matter.

Out here, in the world where facts do matter, too many people have abdicated their responsibility to keep lies out of circulation. They’ve made space for bad ideas based on untruths to establish themselves.

Since at least the W. Bush years we have seen a concerted effort at erosion of this community and an effort to make truth impossible to know.

It’s gotten worse as time goes on. Bad actors lie and lie and lie. The world of lies is formed and people live inside it.

Being part of this community means we need to work together to safeguard truth.

We need as a group to be hostile to lies and bad information. We need an ecosystem of ideas where there is no niche for false claims to take hold.

Right now however that isn’t happening.