Gundega Šmite

Q: What are the most fulfilling and most challenging aspects of your job?

The challenging aspect of my creative work is that usually a very limited audience is being reached. Classical contemporary music is very marginal nowadays. In order to compensate for this type of isolation, I also compose pedagogical pieces for young children. The fulfilling aspect is the process itself, the collaboration of performers and the reception from the audience, if positive.

As a teacher, I work with very young children (3-4 years old) and young, professional adults at the University level (from age 18). Generally there are not so many challenging aspects. Of course, I try to develop my teaching approaches on a regular base, but otherwise it is a very fulfilling job.

Q: Do you sense that a shared knowledge of traditional (folk) songs and dances is changing among young people, and if so, how and why?

Yes, it is changing. The traditional music has lost its function as it used to be in “old times”, when it was a part of everyday life. Now it has more a “museum” and historic value. However, I think that there are young people who develop a sense of national identity through playing, dancing and singing traditional music.

Q: In what ways do you see social media impacting how young people use and communicate about music?

I guess that young people themselves share music through social media platforms, they form groups that serve as an identification platform. Through those platforms the communication takes place easier than in life, I guess.

Q: What kind of new methods in work with young people would be helpful in your work? What should be the purpose of these methods?

I believe that in a pedagogical work there should be transdisciplinary learning - many subject areas covering the same topic viewed through different lenses.

I can tell about my only project were I worked with young people age 12 – 17 in collaboration with an art teacher. We created a project called “Abstract Art and Music” – during this project, young people in a group activity (100 students) learned about more abstract forms of art. They created graphic scores and performed them. At the end of the project all those students participated in a live performance, where the art teacher was making “live” graphic scores and the students reacted to it, by making different soundscapes. They really enjoyed it. And all those students were not “music school” students – just a regular student “body”.

I think that engaging creativity is a key concept and method for how to broaden the horizons of young people. And there can be many things – creation of new instruments through recycled garbage (why not?), paying attention to soundscape – to make field recordings and then to elaborate them through electronic music programs, etc.

July 2021