The Recipe for Music

Shalom Shiraniks!
This week marks the beginning of our unit on the music of the Ashkenazi Jews.  We will be learning about the history of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and how their experiences and how the various cultures which they encountered over the centuries helped them to create the unique sounds of the sacred and secular music coming from that part of the Diaspora.

However, before we can talk about Ashkenazi music, we need to determine what makes music Jewish.  And before we can do that, we need to learn about what makes music actually musical.

The students began the unit by expressing what they currently think Jewish music actually is.  The answered the questions, "Where do we hear Jewish music?  Who makes it?  What does it sound like?  How does it make me feel?" before creating preliminary posters expressing what they think Jewish music is.

 


Then, we began to learn about the actual elements of music.  This is really an exciting activity for everyone.  It's pretty empowering to learn how to be a "music critic," and to be able to use the tools that enable you to decipher any composition!

The elements we have covered are RHYTHM, MELODY, HARMONY, TONALITY, DYNAMICS, TEMPO, TEXTURE and GENRE.   We examined examples of each, and the students then wrote their own definitions of Jewish music, integrating their newfound musical knowledge with what we have been learning about the middot (Jewish values), holidays and musical genres.  Here are a few examples of the students' ideas about the elements of Jewish music:

"Jewish music is a genre of music that is usually based on Jewish culture or values."
"You can hear Jewish music in every language."
"Jewish music can cross over with any other genre of music.  Jewish music is worldwide."
"Jewish music is often religious, but can be secular."
"Jewish music brings people together."
"Jewish music usually has values hidden in the lyrics."
"Jewish music is made by Jews."
"You don't have to be Jewish to write Jewish music."
"Jewish music could be prayers, shofar or songs."
"Jewish music is sung all over the world, sometimes in prayers."
"There are many different languages Jewish music can be written in, for example, Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Korean, Creole, etc."

Overall, we had a very good class discussion about what makes Jewish music Jewish.  Throughout the year, we will use the musical criticism techniques that we learned this week in order to evaluate various musical compositions.

In the meantime, during hafsakah, the students are working on their gaga skills in the popular gaga pit!