Music class during coronavirus: How the band plays on

A neuropsychologist and opera singer teamed up to create a form of vocal training for people on the autism spectrum.

Little Kids Rock has helped to revitalize and broaden music education in more than a thousand schools by encouraging children to learn to play popular music, form bands and compose their own songs. Despite a backlash from traditionalists, teaching children to play music they love doesn’t “dumb down” music education—it enriches it.

As popular music has become digital and immaterial in the twenty-first century, record stores are hard to find and those in business struggle to be commercially viable. Used Kids record store in Columbus, OH has been in business for thirty years and is perhaps even more popular now that it was ten years ago. The current management treat the medium of vinyl not as a museum artifact, but rather as a commodity in demand by selling online, holding private events with collectors, and selling the materiality to young people.

"Songs in the Key of Free" is a program in a Pennsylvania prison brings together inmates to play music and write songs that they perform inside, while professional musicians also play the songs in venues outside prison. The program is just a year old and is based on a successful theater program in California that cut recidivism rates and helped decrease prison infractions. The founders of "Songs in the Key of Free" are creating an album of the work, but after that, future funding is unclear.

For the first time, high-profile Grammy attendees this year received an all-day security briefing on how to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks. In light of recent mass shootings and bombs at concerts in Manchester, Las Vegas, and Paris, the musicians met directly with U.S. State Department and European Union officials to learn best practices to help protect themselves, their crews, and their fans.

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, artists are putting on performances of all kinds in traditional and non-traditional spaces. These performances provide entertainment; express pain, loss, and anger; satirize and critique government inaction; and instill pride and hope.

A growing group of teachers is using hip-hop to improve students' understanding of U.S. history concepts and knowledge of SAT-level vocabulary. Austin Martin, who developed Rhymes for Reason, hopes that his program and others "will help show that hip-hop—and by extension AAVE [African American Vernacular English]—is a valid and useful educational tool."

Rather than having assisted living facility residents passively appreciate the arts, many programs are creating opportunities for residents to pursue creative expression. These programs include dance and physical expression, musical composition, and storytelling.

With the extremist group Al-Shabab active in the country, music has been a source of trauma for Somalis with music banned in Shabab controlled territory and musicians assassinated. A reality show centered around musical performance is hoping to bring music back into public life.

Why do schools teach music in a way that turns off so many young people rather than igniting their imagination? A program that taps into students’ passion for pop and rock is revitalizing music education in many schools.