Ilze Rusova

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

Fulfilling – always changing environment, creative, connected with personal growth.

Challenging – cooperation with the young person’s family and environment they are coming from. It comes from the differences in cultural and social experience.

Q: Please describe some examples (things you have personally witnessed) that show how music can contribute to civic engagement among young people. For instance, how through music do young people become more involved in improving their community, or more socially engaged and politically active, or concerned about global challenges?

Excursions – cultural trips in Latvia and abroad motivated the youth to learn more about composers, etc. and motivated them to organize cultural trips for themselves.

Thematic music camps about environment, etc. – creating music about nature.

Music literature – talking about composers and their background, their eras, discussing things nowadays.

Music and crossovers– a conversation about Bocelli and Ed Sheeran, their duet and transcending musical worlds by bridging the different music genres.

Music and charity – music concerts for elderly homes, as a way to share through music.

Q: Please describe examples from conversations among young people (things you have personally observed) that show some of the different ways they discuss music.

Yes, there are different ways. Music literature – music they are listening to, very different. For example, pop and Rachmaninoff, some people listen to both. People with musical experience are more analytical and their language is more nuanced, including music terms that reveal their experience. People with no or little experience form their emotions and viewpoint on music based only on their emotional viewpoint.

Q: Based on what you have seen, how do such conversations change as young people mature (for instance, ages 15-17; 18-20; 21-25)?

There are different experiences. If youth are exposed to various musical experiences, the understanding grows and the field of music becomes varied and different. If not, the conversations don’t change much. It does not always depend on whether the young person “likes” the music or not, it’s about the experience.

Q: Based on your experience, have discussions of music and society among young people generally changed across years due to different historical conditions? If so, how and why?

The topics change according to the themes of the popular music provided. People talk about the topics their favourite musician is presenting to them through music or music video.

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?

Part of the youth don’t have the interest in tradition, ethnography and folk music. On the other hand, “Tautumeitas” and “Raxtu raxti” in Latvian music culture present this music in various contemporary music styles, providing modern arrangements that attract attention and I assume could have develop the awareness of the song itself (although it doesn’t mean that the overall interest in the topic is growing).

Q: What is the most interesting story you can share about how music impacts young people?

Most interesting? ☺ A piano student (15-16 yrs. old) is given Tchaikovsky’s piece to play. She’s having a meeting with her friend who is also in the music school. The student replies that she is willing to play the piece because now she’ll have something interesting to talk about with her friend. I think it shows that talking and sharing their feeling on music can become a necessary topic to talk about in their everyday life not only an exclusive topic to talk about after a concert.

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

I think information in the social media is a very monotonous information based on marketing. I’d say it’s a marketing thing, not based on what the youth would be really interested in or how their point of view could be widened.

The conversations are mostly about what is popular already. If it is popular, it becomes more popular. It is not connected with the music itself.

More media oriented on youth diversity should be encouraged.

Q: What kinds of discussions have you witnessed stimulated through instrumental music? Can you imagine some new ways this could be achieved?

For a young person without much experience – not much discussion. There are conversations only if a very emotional experience has been had – e.g., very interesting instrumental solo, very colourful artist performance, etc.

Themes or images in the instrumental music helps. It’s possible to discuss which instrument represents what, etc.

If instrumental music is visualised, the visual image can be connected with music, e.g., pianist Vestards Šimkus with Pēteris Vasks music and Purvītis paintings – in a case with these paintings, a young person started to talk about music and how the feeling or “colour” is achieved.

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?

The methods could be based on a feeling that is understandable for the youth (hearing, seeing, etc.), or an emotion, or a sense of adding up new feelings or emotions that builds on their experience.

An example is connecting songs or instrumental music to images, symbols, scents that they are familiar with. This makes the music more tactile and creates an anchor to widen their experience.

It would be important that the symbols are connected to a theme that is important to them.

Example: A topical event (James Bond new movie) - listening to the music of the film - developing and discussing topics connected with the film or the experience.

Content created by teacher

Music Theme/topic/experience

Content created by student

July 2021