Daniel's Annotated Bibliography

Solomon, J. (2021, September 28). School drum circles. Reverberations: Teachers Teaching Teachers. https://member.aosa.org/resource_library/viewdetail/1917

In his Reverberations contribution, Jim Solomon provides preliminary ideas for a music educator who is leading drum circles with students. He touches upon instructional strategies that cover a variety of musical abilities, and discusses ways that educators are able to differentiate the drum circle experience for participants. Utilizing simple speech patterns, basic playing technique featuring “high” and “low” tones (introduced to him by World Music Drumming pedagogy), and a variety of timbres to explore, Solomon provides a sequence for how to engage students in a drum jam session to build musical concepts and heighten the experience for participants.

Additionally, Solomon discusses the different responsibilities and roles that drum circle leaders and participants play to contribute to the ensemble experience. He suggests that students set-up and choose their own instruments in order to increase the buy-in and provide more opportunities for student choice. He also suggests that, after a groove has begun, to highlight individual students who may be “jamming out”, to feature them as a soloist and give inspiration for other participants in the drum circle.

Thomas-Solomon, J. (2017). Avon Gillespie and the silent realm of teaching. The Orff Echo, 49(2), 32–36. https://member.aosa.org/resource_library/viewdetail/1393

‌In her article, Judith Thomas-Solomon (unrelated to Jim Solomon) shares an experience at a professional development session led by a great Orff instructor, Avon Gillespie, who passed in 1989 at the age of 51. Known for his masterful movement and dancing, this particular session that Thomas-Solomon attended featured instruction by Gillespie using no spoken communication. Gillespie instead relied upon singing, miming, demonstrating the movement expectations, and nonverbal cues to indicate to the session goers what they should do and listen for.

         Within the article, Thomas-Solomon focuses on the magical quality of Gillespie’s nonverbal style of instruction. Without a word to even begin the session, Gillespie had established the expectation, and, according to Thomas-Solomon, set the precedent that he would not be speaking a single word in the entire activity. By the end of the session, all of the attendees sang a 3-part arrangement of a traditional Bantu folk song that incorporated movement, monophonic and polyphonic harmony, and a method of delivery that respects the culture the song originates from. Although this was delivered to trained, experienced music teachers, we can also incorporate elements or segments of instruction utilizing minimal verbal communication. This removes many barriers for students, and increases the need for students to remain hyper-focused on the teacher.

Whitley, R. (2013). The Orff process in the ESL classroom: Teaching suprasegmental pronunciation. The Orff Echo, 45(3), 26–28. https://member.aosa.org/resource_library/viewdetail/1153

‌In his article, Ran Whitley lays out a common struggle that multilingual learners (who Whitley refers to as ESL students – English as a Second Language) face in their English language acquisition. Whitley shares observations he has made regarding how many teachers working with multilingual learners spend more time on segmental pronunciation (as in, pronouncing individual letter combinations, diagraphs, words, etc.) as opposed to suprasegmental pronunciation (how these words fit together into sentences). He shares the perspective that many music teachers seamlessly incorporate speech patterns into their instruction of rhythmic patterns, and shares methods for general classroom teachers to utilize these music-speech patterns in their English language instruction to these multilingual students.

         Most languages are divided into either syllable-timed or stress-timed languages. While English is a stress-timed language, many languages of the largest populations of multilingual learners in my school (Spanish, Mandarin, French, Bosnian, and Vietnamese to name a few) are syllable-timed languages. This language nuance means that many of my multilingual learners at my school have an additional barrier to smooth and assimilated English language usage. Although the strategies I will use with my drum circle students will not use much spoken language, I do plan to utilize “drum speech” patterns, which might help my students to become more aware of stress timings and rhythmic cadences in English.