Blog 2: Research & Respect
For Grade 9 Vocal & Instrumental
The Curriculum Expectations
Here's what this activity covers under the Ontario Arts Curriculum;
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B1. The Critical Analysis Process
B1.1 listen to selections that represent a variety of musical styles and genres, and identify and reflect on their personal responses to them
B1.2 identify and describe the use of elements and other components of music in a variety of selections, including their performance repertoire
B1.4 conduct research to gather reliable information relating to specific music, musicians, and the musical opinions of others, and describe the impact this information has had on their own opinions or assessments
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B2. Music and Society
B2.2 identify and describe ways in which commercial music reflects the society in which it was created and how it has affected communities or culture
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C2. Characteristics and Development of Music
C2.2 identify and describe shared and unique characteristics of types of music from around the world, including Aboriginal music
Short Video Explanation
This is a discussion focused assignment that lets students choose between two topics with similar themes, one of which I found out through my old high school music teacher and her students talking about it, and the other I stumbled across a few years ago while browsing the internet.
I’ll start this lesson off by introducing students to both headlines and give them an opportunity to Think-Pair-Share on the question: “What can you glean from either title? Is this something you might’ve heard about already?”
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Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia
Award-Winning Japanese Composer Exposed as a White Man Pretending to Be Japanese
Breaking the students into groups, the groups can decide which article to look at and answer. After the students read through the snippet, I’ll give them time to work through a few guiding questions off to the side; writing down their thoughts on whiteboards or paper.
Scots Article
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Why do you think no one noticed until about half of the Scots Wikipedia was written by the teenager?
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Why do you think the author eventually stopped using the disclaimer?
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What kind of extra damage could have been done had this not been pointed out sooner?
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How can we prevent this kind of damage from happening to other, less used languages? Is it our job to do so?
Larry Clark Article
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Aside from the listed reasons, why could he have gone through with this in the first place despite potential backlash?
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How much damage do you think has done to other, legitimate composers?
- How could this whole thing have been avoided, if it could?
- Is there any way this could have been done from an angle of appreciation and not appropriation? Is that possible?
Once groups have had enough time to work through the questions, I'll get the groups to meet up with one another, making sure each group is meeting with a group that worked on a different article. There, they can share their thoughts, and if need be, they can refer to the guiding questions on the board to direct their conversation.
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What was the common theme?
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Was either party being actively malicious? Does that change anything regarding the damage that was done?
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Why do people do this? Is there any one common reason?
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Once groups have had time to discuss, I'd bring the class back together for the main discussion following the questions here, before giving them a research assignment focusing on music from other cultures.
The Activity
Article Snippets:
Shock an Aw: US Teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia
The Scots Wikipedia entry on the Canada goose – or “Canadae guiss” – was at first honest about its provenance. A tag warned: “The ‘Scots’ that wis uised in this airticle wis written bi a body that’s mither tongue isna Scots. Please impruive this airticle gin ye can.”
But, as the author grew in confidence, so he removed the caveat, and continued on his Scots-writing spree.
Now an American teenager – who does not speak Scots, the language of Robert Burns – has been revealed as responsible for almost half of the entries on the Scots language version of Wikipedia.
In the middle ages, Scots was one of the great literary languages of the British Isles. But 18th-century intellectuals, including David Hume, sought to remove “Scotticisms” from their writing and speech. It has enjoyed growing momentum in recent years, and one of the forums designed to promote it is Scots Wikipedia, the largest open-access corpus of the Scots language in the world.
The revelation about the teenage contributor was made on Reddit by a user called Ultach who pointed out that Scots Wikipedia was notorious for its poor linguistic quality.
The entries in question do little more than substitute occasional, and often wrongly spelled, Scots words into English grammatical constructions. As a result, the project often inadvertently ends up being used to bolster arguments that Scots is not a language in its own right.
Award-Winning Japanese Composer Exposed as a White Man Pretending to Be Japanese
Larry Clark, a world-renowned composer in New York, was forced to apologize on social media after he was called out for using a fake Japanese name to profit off the demand for diversity in music several years ago.
Over the weekend, music teacher Owen Davis wrote about Clark’s deception via an impassioned Facebook post.
In his post, Davis lamented on his recent discovery that Clark, an American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) award-winning composer, generated income essentially intended for a person of color.
“*PSA* to all of my friends in music education and specifically the band world: Prominent composer/Arranger Larry Clark made a pen name ‘Keiko Yamada’ to pretend to be a Japanese Female composer in order to profit from calls for diversity in music education!” Davis wrote.
The teacher, who himself is a music composer, questioned what value publishing work under the name of Keiko Yamada would impart to the music community.
“This is disgusting, misleading, and just awful that we have students being subjected to not even appropriated music, but a fantasy of appropriated music. What does this accomplish? What goals of diversity and growth does this further?”
Sources
Brooks, L., & Hern, A. (2020, August 26). Shock an AW: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia. The Guardian.
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General, R. (2021, December 20). Award-winning Japanese composer exposed as a white man pretending to be Japanese.
NextShark. https://nextshark.com/larry-clark-japanese-composer