Publication alert! I co-wrote a book chapter about hip-hop in the music classroom with Toni Blackman, one of my major music education heroes and the central figure in my doctoral dissertation. It’s called “Building Hip-Hop Music Educators: Personal Reflections on Rap Songwriting in the Classroom.” It’s part of a new edited volume about hip-hop education that is …
Tag Archives: Toni Blackman
Building Hip-Hop Educators – new book chapter abstract
Oliver Kautny, a professor of music education at the University of Cologne, Germany, and founder of the Cologne Hip Hop Institute, invited me to contribute a chapter to a book that the Institute is planning to publish, an edited volume on hip-hop and music education as an open access book by Transcript Publishing. I’m co-writing …
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The Song Factory course
I have been teaching songwriting for a lot of years as a means to other ends: with my private guitar and production students, with my music tech students, with my music education students, with my music theory students. But this semester at The New School, I get to teach my first actual songwriting class whose …
The NYU Music Education Popular Music Practicum
This year, for the first time, I’m co-teaching the NYU Steinhardt Music Education Popular Music Practicum with Dr Kimberly McCord. Kimberly is doing the first half of the semester, and I’m doing the second half. She’s covering live performance and improvisation in the rock and “modern band” idioms, and I’m doing songwriting and remixing in …
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Transcribing Lil’ Kim
Toni Blackman recommends a rap writing exercise: take an existing flow and replace the lyrics with your own. In order to do this with my music education students in the spring, I’m going to provide them with notated transcriptions as well as recordings. I’ve transcribed a couple of Toni’s recommended verses. The first was KRS-One’s …
What is Hip-Hop Education, the remix
In my first official interview with each of my three dissertation research participants, I asked them to answer the question, “What is hip-hop education?” To analyze their responses, I edited their answers down to their most salient moments and remix them by laying them over related music. The next step was to compare the remixed …
Transcribing KRS-One
In my most recent dissertation interview with Toni Blackman, I asked how a non-rapper like me might approach rap songwriting with music education students. The best approach, of course, would be to just invite Toni herself to come in and teach it, but I wanted suggestions for what to do when that’s not possible. She …
Adam Neely video on rap covers
I have been enjoying Adam Neely’s videos for a few years, so it was pretty exciting when he asked me to help out with his recent examination of white supremacy and music theory. It was even more exciting when he invited me to do an interview on the problem of the white rap cover. See …
Toni Blackman interview remix – What is hip-hop education?
For my dissertation on hip-hop educators, I’m creating a mixtape of remixed interviews with my research participants. Here I talk through the process of remixing an interview with Toni Blackman that I recorded on August 20, 2020 in Prospect Park. The remix is made from the eighteen most interesting/pertinent/relevant minutes of an hour and a …
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Remixing Ben Shapiro
My dissertation research includes a methodology of my own invention, which I’m calling analytical remixing. I’m writing about three hip-hop educators, in order to illuminate hip-hop as an education philosophy, not just a subject area. That includes centering the remix as an important and underexplored music education practice. Beyond just writing about remixing, I am making …