(a) Title of piece: Amhrán na gCupán
(b) Performer(s): Nolan Laoibhse and co
(c) Culture or Origin – traditional folk song, set in Gaelic
(d) Orchestration- singers, solo cups, guitars, mandolin, bass
For this week’s blog post I borrow a song that is now a fairly strong staple of middle and high school women’s choirs in Texas as a “just for fun” song that was brought to our attention through the movie, “Pitch Perfect.” To navigate the validity or possible genius of this movie is not the intention of my post, but to discuss our readings this week about the importance of musical play and the role of transmission, this song immediately came to mind. In the article, Children’s Natural and Necessary Musical Play: Global Contexts, Local Applications, authors Campbell and Lew write, “Play has been described as a“”cause and effect” of a particular culture within which children are raised.” (Campbell, Lew, 58) The age of students that walk through my doors on a daily basis are high school students, many of whom are burdened with a abundance of obligations to meet at school, work, and at home. Their free time is generally spent watching some type of entertainment, either movies, some television, or enjoying music. When the movie “Pitch Perfect” was released, so too were the internal desires to recreate the scene of Anna Kendrick playing a percussion part with a red Solo cup, while also singing what sounds like an Irish drinking song. Once one student had the part, they were often drafted as a young teacher, peer instructing others who wished to learn this song. So many of the girls in my program learned the song, that we performed it at our end of year show.
The reason I chose this version of the video is that I feel it demonstrates what Nettl describes as transmission. In Chapter 21 of Nettl’s book, In Human Culture, the author writes, “One may think of a repertory as consisting of a vocabulary of units, perhaps melodic or rhythmic motifs, lines of music accompanying lines of poetry, cadential formulas, chords or chord sequences. We could study the process of transmission by noting how a repertory keeps these units intact, and how they are combined and recombined into larger units that are acceptable to the culture as performances. The smallest units of content may be the principal units of transmission. (see Lord 1965, Chaps. 3 and 4; Treitler 1975):” (Nettl, 295) Many different “versions” of the song have been recorded to YouTube, but this version always intrigues me. The core rhythmic and melodic motifs are intact, the sequences are generally the same with slight alterations at the chorus, the only distinct change is the language. I took a moment to translate the opening titles, using the Google Translate tool:
Amhrán na gCupán – The song cups
Laoibhse ni nuallain agus co – Nolan Laoibhse and co
rannphairtithe idir scolairi agus foireann – between students and staff participants
Curriarracht dhomhanda – global Curriarracht
(go bhfios duinn) – To our knowledge
Linking on the YouTube site leads to a summer program where students are immersed into learning the Gaelige language, the traditional Irish language. My educated guess, by looking at translated webpages and the context of the images posted, is that students are using songs and dances from their cultural environment and using the content to help bridge their knowledge and learning of a new language with familiar concepts. Campbell’ article states a similar point, stating, “This means that children use play as a vehicle for cultural learning, and their play can serve as an important indicator and reflection of their development.”(Campbell, 58) In a learning method similar way to my students, the cultural impact of their entertainment choices has an impact on their ways of “releasing” their internal creativity.
For younger children, I would agree that we as educators must help guide the learning experiences by providing the appropriate stimuli, without necessarily dictating the response. Call and response is an easily learned behavior, but to truly engage creativity, we must allow exploration. Campbell writes, “As adults responsible for the young generation’s welfare and education, teachers must challenge themselves to find creative ways to incorporate children’s musical spontaneity in the classroom.” (Campbell, 62) Providing structured time to be spontaneous might be a way to encourage discovery in younger age brackets, but the same discovery with my students tends to happen when students can remove themselves from the larger group to reveal some hidden musical idea. Teachers also need to fill their toolkits with ideas about world music discovery, as Campbell guides, “The children who will populate schools and preschools will increasingly come from these non-European groups, and teachers will need to be prepared to meet their unique needs.” (Campbell, 58) Therefore, I feel it is incumbent on this generation of teachers to learn to be creative with our students as well.