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Diversity in Classical Music
An Overview of the NBSO K–12 Music Keyword Equity Database
By Jazzmone Sutton, NAfME Senior Manager for State Advocacy and Equity
Representation plays a crucial role in our students’ continued engagement in our music classrooms. In recent years, there has been a growing effort to incorporate a greater and more intentional diversity of composers and musical works into school music programs.
The K-12 Music Keyword Equity Database is a new resource from the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra (NBSO) that can assist music educators and students seeking diversity in classical music. In this interview with NBSO Education Director Terry Wolkowicz, NAfME discusses the origin of the database and how it may foster listening and composition skills, among other topics. This resource is free and available to all.
What inspired the creation of the NBSO K–12 Music Keyword Equity Database, and were there educators engaged in the project’s creation?
Terry Wolkowicz (TW): The idea of the database grew out of a meeting between the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra and local New Bedford Public School music teachers. They expressed a strong desire to include more classical music listening examples in their curriculum that better reflected the diversity of their students. While the number of websites that feature BIPOC* composers’ repertoire continues to grow, there was not one resource that would allow teachers to sort through repertoire by a specific musical concert that is clearly perceptible in their music.
We partnered with local music teachers to first help us compile a list of more than 170 music keywords. These keywords represented concepts that they teach as part of their K–12 curriculum. Music educator Michael Genese, NBSO Education Director Terry Wolkowicz, and the NBSO education specialist and Teaching Artist Adam Jeffreys, contributed to the database’s creation by listening to and analyzing the musical pieces in order to designate the appropriate musical keywords for each one.
How does the database’s “Keyword” system work?
TW: On the home page of the database, music teachers can select a category. These categories represent larger curriculum subjects like melody, form, meter, texture, compositional techniques, and others. When you select a category, a whole range of keywords associated with that category appear in the middle search field on the page. From there you click on a keyword and scroll down to discover all pieces currently in the database that feature that keyword. Teachers can also select more than one keyword, and the results will provide musical examples that contain all selected keywords.
When selecting one of the results, the database takes you to the composition’s page, where teachers can play the piece via an embedded YouTube video, discover other keywords associated with the piece, and get suggested activities and information on the composition.
Discuss how teachers might use these resources in their classroom to foster both listening and composition skills.
TW: The database’s ability to search by specific musical terms, concepts, or compositional techniques invites students to engage in active listening. Students can be encouraged to listen with specific goals in mind, to perceive how the composer enacts and manipulates the selected music keyword in their music. For educators, many pieces in the database have an added feature called “Notable Passages” which focuses students’ listening skills to observe these specific keywords in action. Notable Passages allow the teacher to jump to the exact moment in the video where a musical keyword is being demonstrated.
Our database also features an entire category dedicated to compositional techniques. Pieces listed in this category can be used as examples of a composer’s intentional choices to achieve a specific desired musical effect. This category can also be used to generate composition prompts for your students.
What impact do you hope this has on students and educators?
TW: By including music from BIPOC composers, the database exposes students to a richer, more diverse set of musical traditions. Classical music is often seen as rooted in European heritage, but through this database, students can learn that the classical tradition is not homogenous. They will hear how composers from various cultural backgrounds bring their own unique perspectives and techniques into the genre. This helps to dismantle the notion that classical music is the exclusive domain of white European men and broadens students’ cultural literacy.
For students of color, seeing composers who share their heritage or lived experiences represented in the music they study can create a sense of pride and belonging. It allows them to see themselves reflected in the classical tradition, which has often felt distant and exclusionary. This representation not only validates their identities, but also reinforces the idea that their voices and cultures are important, valued, and capable of contributing to a broader cultural conversation.
For educators, the database can help them seamlessly connect BIPOC composer repertoire to their daily lesson topics. Educators can teach classical music through a broader lens, showing students that classical music is not a monolithic tradition, but a collection of voices and experiences from around the world. This empowers educators to play a pivotal role in changing the cultural narrative surrounding classical music.
How do you envision the role of the database evolving over time, and what future updates are you excited about?
TW: The New Beford Symphony Orchestra envisions the growth of the database to include more teaching resources and professional development opportunities for music educators. We hope to curate resources to help teachers incorporate works by BIPOC composers in meaningful and pedagogically sound ways. We also hope to build webinars and workshops to help educators learn how to use the database effectively, explore new teaching strategies, or deepen their own understanding of diversity and inclusion in music education. Finally, we hope to build our database community creating a place where teachers can share their ideas, lesson plans, and experiences about integrating BIPOC composers’ work into their classrooms.
Since this is a “living” database, what is the process of receiving feedback from educators on potential improvement and additions?
TW: The database invites teachers to contact the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra via the database contact page to suggest additional composers, repertoire, and to share lessons and activities that they have created around the database. We also encourage teachers to sign up to join our growing community of users to receive information about new repertoire and features as they are added to the database.
*Black, Indigenous, or People of Color
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Published Date
January 15, 2025
Category
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA)
- Gender
- Race
- Repertoire
- Representation
Copyright
January 15, 2025. © National Association for Music Education (NAfME.org)