Music In Our Schools Month® 2026 Song Bracket

Music In Our Schools Month® 2026

“United Through Music” Song Bracket

By NAfME Member Elizabeth Caldwell

The original blog first appeared on the Organized Chaos blog.

This year the theme for Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM®) is “United Through Music.” I have been doing a “musical March madness”-style song bracket, where students listen to different songs each day and vote on their favorites, for several years now, and for the last several years I’ve tried to tie the songs into the annual theme NAfME chooses. To connect with this year’s theme, I’ve decided to choose songs that include 2 or more languages, to show how music can connect people across cultures and languages.

The theme of “United Through Music” is not new—NAfME is using the same theme as last school year. In my song bracket last year, I provided an entire playlist of songs that combined two or more musical genres (many of them also from different cultures), which you can read here. I also created an entire playlist of songs focusing on unity/ togetherness in 2023 for their theme that year, “Music Is All of Us,” which was a similar theme! If you didn’t use my song bracket that year and you’d rather focus on lyrics with themes of unity to connect with this year’s theme, you can find that list of songs here.

As I have done the last few years, I’m going to be setting up Google slides files with the songs for each day embedded in the slides so that classes can vote in their homerooms. If you want to see how I organize the logistics so classes can vote every day regardless of whether they have music that day or not, check out my 2021 MIOSM® post (and definitely let me know if you have any questions—I’m happy to help). Using slides was such an easy way to have all the songs organized and make it easy for the homeroom teachers to report their classes’ votes rather than having to email me every day! I don’t have the rights to share the song files, but you can make a copy of my slide templates and add the audio files yourself by clicking on the image below (it will automatically ask you if you want to make a copy)—here is a tutorial on setting it up in slides using the templates.

In my song lists each year I try to include songs from different genres and time periods, representing artists of different backgrounds and including different languages. This year is obviously no different. You’ll find a blank slide template in the slides file linked above: I use that to show the lyrics in their original language and in the English translation for parts that are not in English.

Here are the songs I’ll be using in this year’s bracket, with the languages included in each song included (in no particular order):

1. El Ritmo by J. Esho (French, Arabic, Spanish)
2. Djapana by Yothu Yindi (English, Yolnu Matha – northern Australia)
3. Con un vezzo all’italiana by Mozart (Italian, French, English)
4. Ojos Asi by Shakira (Spanish, Arabic)
5. Spider by GIMS and DYSTINCT (French, Arabic)
6. Uewo Muite Arukou by Mimy Succar, Nora Suzuki, Tony Succar (Japanese, Spanish)
7. Wanna Be Yours by Violette Wautier (Thai, English)
8. Four Women by Sara Tavares, Chiwoniso, Deborah, and Joy Denalane (Brazilian Portuguese, Shona, French, German)
9. Aaj Ibaadat by Javed Bashir and Shreyas Puranik (Sanskrit, Hindi)
10. Jerusalema Remix by Master KG feat. Burna Boy and Nomcebo (Nigerian pidgin, Zulu, Yoruba, Hausa)
11. Golden by HUNTRIX (Korean, English)
12. Period by YonYon, Taichi Mukai (Korean, Japanese)
13. Nus Nus by Noam Tsuriely (Hebrew, Arabic, English)
14. Girl On Fire + Ala Tabiaty by Alaa Wardi and Nesma Mahgoub (English, Arabic)
15. Aicha by Moe Phoenix (German, French, Arabic)
16. So Far by Habanot Nechama (Hebrew, English)
17. Nah by Marie Bothmer and Lord Esperanza (German, French)
18. Zemër by Dhurata Dora and Soolking (French, Albanian)
19. El Baile del Kkoyaruna by Pascuala Ilbaca y Fauna (Spanish, Quechua)
20. CHANGE by E.SO (Mandarin, English)
21. Mungu Halali by Blinky Bill and Wambura Mitaru (Swahili, English)
22. Libre by Alvaro Soler and Monika Lewczuk (Spanish, Polish)
23. Hitzeman by ZETAK and Oques Grasses (Catalan, Basque)
24. Lathi by Weird Genius and Sara Fajira (Javanese, English)

I’m excited to see how the students respond to this year’s playlist, and I’m curious to see which song wins out in the end! What are your plans for Music In Our Schools Month this year? What are other songs that fit this theme? I’d love to hear more suggestions in the comments below my blog post—I’m sure there are plenty more great ones out there. If you’re looking for more ideas to use for MIOSM, here are all my posts on the topic.

About the author:

NAfME member Elizabeth Caldwell has been teaching elementary general music and choir for over a decade and cannot imagine ever doing anything else. She is also the author of the website, Organized Chaos Music, where she regularly shares organization strategies, lesson plans, and other ideas to encourage purposeful creativity in the music classroom. She holds her B.M.E from Wheaton College (Illinois) and her M.M.E. from Boston University and was named Teacher of the Year in 2018. She has presented on lesson planning, restorative behavior management, effective recorder teaching, world music, National Core Arts general music standards, and other music education topics at conferences around the globe and teaches an e-course on lesson planning through her website.

Follow Elizabeth on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.

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