Posts

Piano

Active Participation in Music Education Improves Academic Performance

in /by

Another good read on the value of music education, noting that the benefits are dependent on learning to play music, not just appreciate it . . .

In the study, which appears online in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, the team showed that exposure to music lessons physically stimulated the brain and changed it for the better. However, simply being exposed to music education doesn’t seem to be sufficient, you have to also be actively involved.

Read more at MedicalDaily.com.

 

Hema Ramaswamy

How Hema Ramaswamy Found Healing Through Traditional Indian Dance

in /by

In a report that may be of special interest to parents of children in our World Music in the Schools program, National Public Radio recently featured a story of healing through practice of Bharata Natyam, the traditional dance of South India . . .

Ramaswamy, who has Down syndrome, originally began dancing for health reasons. “But then it became part of her, and she really loves and enjoys it, and it took her 13 years with a lot of challenges, midway, to complete this,” explained her father, Ram. “And now today is a perfect day for her — her graduating in this art.”

Listen to, and read, the story on NPR

Musical Fix

A Musical Fix for American Schools: Music Training Boosts IQ, Focus, Persistence

in /by

A Wall Street Journal essay highlights the need for more music education in our schools . . .

American education is in perpetual crisis. Our students are falling ever farther behind their peers in the rest of the world. Learning disabilities have reached epidemic proportions, affecting as many as one in five of our children. Illiteracy costs American businesses $80 billion a year.

Many solutions have been tried, but few have succeeded. So I propose a different approach: music training. A growing body of evidence suggests that music could trump many of the much more expensive “fixes” that we have thrown at the education system.

Read the story at WSJ,com (paywall)

Mariachi

Engaging Your City’s Youth Through the Arts

in /by

Here’s a report on an extraordinarily valuable program that supporters of traditional music–or any music–might want to be aware of. Three cheers for the City of San Fernando, with a shout out for the CAC!

The City of San Fernando invests directly in an award-winning Mariachi Master Apprentice Program. Launched in 2001 as an experiment, the program has garnered international recognition. . . . Over the past decade 100 percent of the students enrolled in the program have graduated. Typically comparable rates are less than 60 percent.

Read the full article at WesternCity.com.

CWM Receives Second Highest NEA Award in San Diego

in /by

San Diego Union Tribune, April 16, 2014

The quality of the Center for World Music’s World Music in the Schools program has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts with the second highest award in the San Diego area.

$55,000 to support teaching artists from around the globe who will provide weekly instruction in traditional music and dance of Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe for elementary and secondary-school students in San Diego.

Significantly, of over 100 NEA education grants funded, the CWM ranked within the top 15, with the likes of Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera

Read the full story on the UT website.

 

CWM World Music in the Schools

CAC’s “Art Works!” Reports on the Center’s World Music in the Schools Program

in , /by

Art Works!, October 2011

The California Arts Council asks a question very important to the Center for World Music: “How can the traditional performing arts of cultures East and West help to promote a healthy and enriched world?”

The California Arts Council (CAC) has supported Center for World Music teaching artist residencies in K-12 schools for over 10 years. The residencies have provided thousands of San Diego students with weekly, year-round, hands-on workshops in the performing arts from six broad cultural areas of the world: South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

Read more here.

UT Article Photo Canyon Crest

CWM-Canyon Crest Program Receives Grammy Enterprise Award

in , /by

San Diego Union Tribune, June 1, 2011

Canyon Crest Academy has become the first public high school in San Diego County to receive a Grammy Signature Schools Enterprise Award. The $5,500 award was in recognition of the high quality of the school’s music program, and in particular its “border-leaping” Javanese gamelan ensemble.

Canyon Crest is the first school anywhere that ever that applied to us for funding for a gamelan ensemble. Our screening panel and blue-ribbon committee — which includes the president of Disney Music and the chairmen of the music departments at USC and UCLA — though that was really cool.

—David R. Sears, Senior Director of Education, Grammy Foundation

Canyon Crest inaugurated its gamelan classes in 2010 in cooperation with the Center for World Music’s World Music in the Schools program. The Canyon Crest gamelan is directed by World Music in the Schools artist in residence Pak Djoko Walujo.

Read the full UT article here.

 

Tabla Class

Spotlight: The Center for World Music

in , /by

The Participant Observer, October 2010

The CWM is featured in an article in San Diego’s premier multicultural newsletter . . .

 During the 2009-2010 school year, the Center served 2,210 students at 9 schools with long-term weekly classes (13-28 weeks) and provided an additional 3,240 students at these 9 schools with school-wide assembly performances by the Center’s teaching artists, reaching a total of 5,450 students.

Read the full article here.

Persian Drum Class

San Diego Students Learn About Persian Music and Culture

in , /by

Peyk: The Persian Cultural Center’s Bilingual Magazine, September 1, 2010

Our friends at the Persian Cultural Center of San Diego have published a nice article about our World Music in the Schools program in Persian music and culture at King-Chavez Academies in San Diego. The instructor is Kourosh Taghavi, a world-renowned professional setar player, and CWM teaching artist in residence.

Mr. Taghavi teaches about 250 K-5th grade students at King-Chavez Academies, where he is on campus for two full days a week. As the students learn about Persian classical music, they are introduced to Persian culture as well. . . . In the spring of 2010, the demand for the program increased beyond the resources that were immediately available, so the Center reached out to the Iranian-American community in California and members of the community responded generously.

The CWM is thankful for this support, and we’re sure the students would agree!

Read the full story here.