“There is no syllabus for this class.” –Dr. Mayo

Dr. Mayo let it be known during our first Community Music class that he hates it when anyone from his classes quotes him. In this case, we thought this one was relevant. Currently, we’re awaiting a reaction.

This Community Music Seminar at SUNY Fredonia was defined as a “backwards course.” The class was presented with the unique challenge of writing our own syllabus and text. We have a final grade of a B as it stands right now; later on, we each have to justify raising or lowering this grade. We doubt there will be any takers for the latter option.

We’re fairly certain that the assignments for class jobs are as follows:

Blogmasters: Don Dohr and Mary Olenen
Link master: Christina Fosberg
Pod caster: Joel Carle and Ada MacFarlane
YouTube Personnel: Kelly Elinski and Joe DeDionsio

On the off chance that this information is not correct, please let us know.

And now that we finally have the nitty-gritty details out of the way, we can move on to bigger and better things. Speaking of big things, we all found out that the topic of community music is quite large in and of itself. Our class viewed a slideshow that was constructed by a group of undergraduate music education candidates at SUNY Fredonia; it served as a brief introduction to the typology of community music.

Knowing that the spectrum of ideas that constitutes community music is large, we had to narrow things down so the class could focus itself into an area of study. We agreed that we would be zeroing in on the area of western New York, with the city of Batavia acting as the eastern boundary in this area of study. We briefly discussed some of the well-known community music groups that exist within this community; among them include the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, New Horizons at SUNY Fredonia, and the Chautauqua Children’s Chorale.

About an hour into our community music class, tragedy struck. The internet connection failed to function for a time period which turned out to span the rest of the class period. Attempts to fix the internet connection were mediocre at best. Don and Joel fought valiantly against the connectivity juggernaut but to no avail. Unfortunately, this meant we did not see any YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) movies that would show us more types of community music.

As we recovered from the internet tragedy, the group further discussed what would be upcoming in future classes: the podcast. Our first podcast which will be recorded on February 6, 2008 (hopefully with great success) will center round-table discussion on the following items: the attempt to once again define community music, characteristics and examples of different community music, and the different environments in which community music exists and the impact that it bears. The discussion will have influences from David Elliot, Constantijn Koopman, and Kari Veblen. It will also bear influence from a specific set of articles and websites:

http://www.worldmusiccentre.com/uploads/cma/veblen.PDF - Apples and Oranges, Solar Systems and Galaxies by Kari Veblen

http://www.communitymusic.50megs.com/custom2.html – Assigning Value to the CM Experience

http://borntogroove.org/ - Born to Groove (Groovology)

Veblen, K.K. and Olsson, B. (2002). Community music: towards an international perspective, in R. Colwell and C. Richardson (eds), The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, New York: Oxford Univertsity Press, pp. 730-53.

Our spellchecker seems to think that “Groovology” is not a word. We’ll have to add it to the computer’s dictionary for future use for the next time it comes up in a blog entry. Silly computer.

We have to leave you until next week, in which we will be producing our first pod cast. In the meantime, here’s to hoping a multi-directional microphone materializes in Mason Hall at SUNY Fredonia. Or someone could just bring one. That’s fine too.

-Don Dohr
-Mary Olenen