Amanda Bumgarner

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/publications/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Following is an excerpt from an article in the Spring 2021 issue titled “Sharing through Song: Resources for Singing Migration Stories” by Ethan M. Chessin
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The 2020 NWACDA conference title was “Sharing our Story.” I love it when my students are able to tell their own stories through song. My problem, though, is that I teach in a school where the stories aren’t that diverse. How, then, can we use song to tell someone else’s story? Ignoring migration narratives is not an option in 2021 if we are to be relevant. In this article, I will provide resources for teachers and directors interested in using music to teach choirs and audiences about immigration.

I came to this project by accident. Every other year, I commission a local rock musician to write a concert-length program for my students to perform alongside a rock band and then take the show on tour. I use this material to teach my students about the business of music from local industry professionals, and the students end up writing press releases and booking the opening acts for the show. This year, we worked with Luz Elena Mendoza from the band, Y La Bamba. Mendoza wrote an incredible piece titled “El Agua De Mi Ser” centered on the story of her parents’ immigration from Mexico. Upon delivering the score, Mendoza urged me to teach my students to understand the truth of immigration stories rather than the political narratives they may have been more familiar with. As you already know, immigration is a huge topic! Fortunately, so is love, beauty, hope, music, or any of the other topics that we tackle on a regular basis in our choirs.

If I want to center a concert on love, I would much rather engage with a first-person text in which my students are singing love songs rather than singing about love. This is the magic of choir. Our choristers get to try on emotions rather than just describing them. To teach about immigration, then, I sought out first-person narratives of the immigrant experience, in story and song, with musical textures that matched the emotions of the text. At the end of this article, I will include a list of music that meets these criteria, including all voicings and levels of difficulty.

My primary source for this project was The Immigrant Story (www.theimmigrantstory.org). Sankar Raman runs this incredible project, which publishes short immigrant biographies online and hosts live storytelling events. The mission is to expand Americans’ understanding of the stories of immigrants. The Immigrant Story has begun developing a curriculum for teachers to engage students in oral history and journalism to tell the story of immigrants in their own communities. They are offering tremendous assistance to schools and teachers who would like to use the curricula, including months of lesson plans and editorial assistance. Though my school is in a predominantly conservative community, my students were eager to explore the stories of their neighbors who have immigration stories to tell.

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Read more in the Spring 2021 issue at acda.org/chorteach.

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online publication, designed for those who work with singers of all levels. A full annotated ChorTeach index is available online at acda.org/publications/chorteach. Over 160 articles are organized into seventeen categories. For submission information, to view the index, or to read the latest issue, visit acda.org/chorteach. Following is an excerpt from an article in the Fall 2019 issue titled “Incorporating Mindfulness into the Choral Rehearsal” by Lawrence E. Fisher
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As music teachers, we often have the advantage of being able to build relationships over several years with our students. We often see warning signs before others. We teachers are the individuals a student may confide in when he or she is struggling with anxiety or depression. We foster a sense of community and family in our ensembles that perhaps offers a safe space or a support network that our students might not have in other places in their lives.

Based on the programming I am seeing at other directors’ concerts, as a choral community we are doing our best to show our students that there is hope. We choose themes for our concerts such as light, dreams, social justice, and equality. The frequency with which we program works such as Andrea Ramsey’s A Letter from a Girl to the World or Jake Runestad’s Please Stay says to me that we are addressing some important issues head on in our rehearsals.1 This led me to wonder whether I could do more to explicitly give my students tools to help with challenging situations or feelings. Studies show that meditation can be just as effective at relieving anxiety in teenagers as antidepressants.2 I decided that I wanted to try to incorporate mindfulness into my rehearsals.

Of course, I was faced with many questions: How do I implement this? Would my students hate it? Am I taking too much time out of each rehearsal when that next performance is around the corner? I decided the best way was to start exploring. What better way than to use what I know. As a high school student, I participated in workshops on Creative Motion. A Dalcroze-related school of thought, it explores getting in tune with your body and deep breathing.

After week-long camps in these activities, I always felt at peace. Only recently did I make the connection that much of what I had learned there were mindfulness practices. I decided to start with some of the tools I had learned as a high school student. I decided to begin incorporating mindfulness into my rehearsals using a centering exercise that has students focus on the breath and deep breathing.

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Read more in the Fall 2019 issue at acda.org/chorteach.

NOTES
1Major Depression: The Impact of Overall Health. (2018, May 10). Retrieved from http://www.bcbs.com/the-health-ofamerica

2 Jamison Monroe (2015, August 18). The Adolescent Brain on
Meditation. Retrieved from www.psychologytoday.com