Improvised Songs As a Transdisciplinarity Repertoire: Music, Language, and Social Experience

WORKSHOP ABSTRACT

Improvised songs as a transdisciplinary repertoire: Music, Language, and Social Experience Albert Casals Ibáñez, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain)

The premise of this workshop is that improvised songs can be an interesting repertoire to work different school subjects together. Improvised songs are traditional songs common in many cultures. They are based on a more or less fixed melody on which texts are improvised with a given rhyme. As Ethhopoetic Theory suggests (Oriol, 2002), this kind of traditional song is more than the sum of music and language; we have to consider it as a social performance (Ayats, 2007). An early pilot experience to introduce improvised songs in Catalan primary school was implemented through three school subjects: music, language, and social science. The research was developed in two stages. First, the study involved a class group of children aged 10-11 during five months with the collaboration of a music teacher, a language teacher and a researcher. Second, during the next academic course other schools in different contexts worked on this repertoire to contrast their findings with the ones from the first stage. One of the most important conclusions of this research was that improvised songs increase in the perception of a comprehensive education. The study also stressed that songs are important as an interdisciplinary tool of work. The workshop will consist of a theoretical approach and some practice where the participants will learn traditional melodies of Catalonia. On this musical base, they will learn textual techniques to create songs at the moment and they will understand the traditional social performance associated with. This practice will provide some didactic applications to the audience and will also try the participants to be aware of improvised song transdisciplinary nature. Participants are invited to bring instruments in order to enrich the singing.

Note: This workshop is presented in connection with ‘PRIME Symposium C) Ways and Models on teaching Integrated Music Education in pre-service and in-service Teacher Education’ that will take place later.

Albert Casals Ibáñez is professor of the Music Didactics Department at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and member of the Music and Education Research Group of this university. Because of his studies as social and cultural anthropologist and as a music school teacher, his main research area is how ethnomusicology can contribute to improve music in the primary school. Besides, he researches on traditional song and identity, and on the connection between the music and the other school subjects.