Everyone’s shoes are off. Each family has found a spot on the rug, forming a circle. An 8-month-old girl squeals and claps her hands — a skill she’d picked up just a few days earlier — as she bounces up and down. All eyes are on the teacher, Alyson Hayes-Myers, awaiting her notes on the piano, which will signal that class has begun.

Over the next 45 minutes, an otherwise bare room comes alive with sound and feeling. All seven babies are engrossed in Hayes-Myers’ direction and movement, in the songs, in the close interactions the program encourages between them and the adult who brought them. 

Research is clear about the myriad benefits of music in early childhood. It can support , , and . It and . It can strengthen relationships and expose students to languages and customs from other parts of the world. 

In Hayes-Myers’ class, the evidence of the links between music and early development that are found in scientific studies come to life. In the presence of children who are singing or being sung to, who are listening to instruments or playing the instruments themselves, the brain development is obvious — and the joy is infectious.

Her class is in week four of a 10-week session that invites children from birth to age 4 to participate with a caregiver — often a parent, but sometimes a grandparent or nanny. It’s located in Denver, Colorado, at Twinkle Together, a licensed center of Music Together, which is an early childhood music and movement program with locations in over 2,000 communities across 35 countries. 

The program is designed for children, but the target audience may actually be their caregivers, explained Karee Justice-Bondy, director of Denver’s five Music Together locations. “Parents are key,” she said. “They are really our students, not the children. We know children love music.”

So many parents today, Justice-Bondy added, are inundated with information about how best to raise their children, and they end up ignoring their own intuition about how to parent, love and play with their little ones. 

“This can help remind you,” she said of music. 

It can be empowering for families to engage with music, creating opportunities for them to bond and grow together. Many initiatives around the country, including Music Together, are trying to help parents and caregivers tap into that. 

Carnegie Hall’s is another program designed to leverage the power of music in early childhood. The Lullaby Project pairs new and expecting parents with professional artists to write personal lullabies for their babies. The project began almost 15 years ago in partnership with a New York hospital — music was identified as a tool to improve maternal mental health and well-being while strengthening bonds between parent and child — but has since reached families across the globe, in spaces such as refugee camps, opioid recovery centers and neonatal intensive care units, according to Tiffany Ortiz, director of early childhood programs at the Weill Music Institute, an education arm of Carnegie Hall. 

The Lullaby Project worked so well, Ortiz said, that families began asking, “What’s next?” In response, staff at Carnegie designed and built out additional for young children and their caregivers, including , a free 10-week music class for infants and toddlers up to 18 months old. 

“People think of Carnegie Hall and these very polished performances, big stages,” Ortiz said. “It’s really these micromoments and the way music can be used every day. … We really are trying to empower families to feel really confident in their music-making, to bolster that bond.”

It’s working, she said. Parents and caregivers have shared with Ortiz that, after participating in a music program, they find themselves singing and making music throughout the day with their child — often during times of transition that can be challenging, such as brushing teeth, mealtime and bedtime. Music takes those tough moments and turns them into something fun and playful, Ortiz recalled families saying. 

“Often, music and music experiences are put on a shelf as a nice-to-have,” Ortiz noted. “It can be a really powerful tool in early development, but it can also help parents and families navigate the more stressful parts of early childhood. I’ve seen it transform so many people’s lives and create a sense of meaning and connection with a child.”

Dennie Palmer Wolf, principal researcher at WolfBrown, an arts research firm that has collaborated with the Weill Music Institute to its early childhood music programs, thinks of music as one of a few “natural resources” every family has (laughing and physical closeness are among the others, she said).

“It can potentially give parents a sense of being effective or capable,” she said. “It’s a source of strength and resilience, in a world that takes that away, grinds it down.”

Of course, this only works if parents are comfortable singing, and many are not. 

Ann C. Kay, co-founder of The Rock ‘n’ Read Project, which leverages music for early literacy, believes that shows like American Idol and The Voice have convinced adults that if they can’t sing well, they should not bother to sing at all. 

“There’s all these messages in our culture now that you’re going to be embarrassed if you open your mouth and sing,” Kay said. 

Susan Darrow, CEO of Music Together Worldwide, made a similar point. Many people now feel that unless they “sound like Lady Gaga, they should sit in the audience and listen.” 

“That might be fine for our culture, but it’s a disaster for early childhood,” Darrow said. “I would love to be able to return music-making to the amateurs. … We want to raise children who are not afraid to sing.”

That starts at home, where the only judge is a benevolent one: To a baby, the most beautiful singing voice is that of their parent or caregiver, regardless of that adult’s ability to carry a tune. 

“We’re not trying to raise the next Yo-Yo Ma,” Darrow added. “We’re trying to raise children who love and participate in music.”

Beyond the benefits to parents, Palmer Wolf expounded on the way that music helps with children’s social-emotional development. When young children are singing and dancing together, they have an awareness of music stopping and starting, of taking turns, of getting quieter and louder, of imitating sound and movement, of self-regulation. 

“It’s an opportunity for kids to learn that your face, your hands, your eyes, your whole body says something to others,” Palmer Wolf said. 

And music can communicate messages far beyond the lyrics of a song, she added. Palmer Wolf has been studying the role of music in some preschools in Boston that have a growing immigrant population, she said, and she’s found that culturally-relevant songs can signal to families that they are welcome in the community. When preschools use music in that way, it helps to build a sense of trust among families who might otherwise be wary, she added. 

“We can’t underplay the signaling power of music,” she said. 

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has announced the creation of a North Carolina Music Office to bolster and honor the state’s music industry and its artists by investing in the industry and creating music programming.

“North Carolina’s vibrant music industry is a key part of our state’s creative economy, driving economic growth and supporting nearly 45,000 jobs,” Cooper said in a . “An official N.C. Music Office will support this growing and important industry.”

The office will raise awareness of North Carolina’s musical heritage and education efforts while promoting economic development within the state through the music industry.

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This new office will be based within the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) and will be equipped with a team to create a state music strategy through partnerships with several groups, including the N.C. Arts Council,  the N.C. Museum of Art, the N.C. Museum of History, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, the N.C. American Indian Heritage Commission, and more.

The office’s team will also partner with organizations such as Visit NC, the N.C. Department of Commerce, and PBS North Carolina.

Educational content will also remain part of the office’s efforts, with collaboration planned between DNCR educators and the N.C. Arts Council, state symphony, and state museums to generate educational programming, said Michele Walker, public information officer for the DNCR.

“The Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is uniquely positioned to support the new North Carolina Music Office thanks to our already robust cultural and educational programming centered on North Carolina music,” said DNCR Secretary Reid Wilson in the release. “We are excited to expand our resources and opportunities for the state’s thriving music industry—one that creates jobs and improves quality of life in all 100 counties.”

Cooper made the announcement on June 21 while proclaiming the day . A few other states such as Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee also have state-supported music offices, according to Cooper’s office.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

But the , a music group made up of second- to 12th-graders began in humbler circumstances at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1993, Downs was searching a school closet for bulletin board paper but found a closetful of instruments instead. So, she asked her students if they wanted to do a concert. 

“You know, being second- and third-graders, they’re fearless,” she said. “So they were just, ‘Let’s do this!”

First, they played at a PTA meeting and then at a nursing home. Ms Downs said the invitations to perform kept coming, leading them to play all over Louisville, and then across the country. 

In 2003, the group became a non-profit organization, offering the Leopard experience to more kids beyond King Elementary. Three years later, HBO documented the group’s journey to New York City to open for the Chick Corea Trio in the film The Leopards Take Manhattan. 

But what really skyrocketed the Leopards to stardom was when a YouTube video of them playing Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train went viral.

“Out of the blue, we got a check from Ozzy Osbourne to help support our group,” Downs said. 

A couple years later, they were invited to appear on the reality show Ozzy and Jack’s World Detour. 

“Some of the kids didn’t know who he was, so we had to do a little education, and they know who he is now,” she added.

The group’s cover of Led Zeppelin later also went viral on YouTube. Downs said the views went from 6,000 to 6 million views in a week. The students did interviews with media outlets all over the world. 

While the students don’t really understand the impact that the group had in their lives when they were younger, Downs said, “I have had alumni come back to me and just say, ‘I can’t believe I did that when I was a kid… I can’t believe that happened to me.”

When we hear the word, “lullaby,” most of us imagine something like the dictionary definition of “a gentle, quiet song that lulls a child to sleep,” a cradle song to soothe a baby’s way to the Land of Nod.

For the past 12 years, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute has been refining that definition with its Lullaby Project, pairing new and expecting parents with professional teaching artists to write lullabies for their babies. Because the parents and caregivers come from a variety of racial, cultural and geographic backgrounds, you’re as likely to hear merengue or the Afrobeat of a djembe as you are to hear a sweet rock-a-bye.

“They’re not all soothing,” says Sarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall’s chief education officer and director of the Weill Music Institute (WMI). “They really become love songs and whatever the parents want them to be. Sometimes a mom will say, ‘My baby is so active, I want to write more of a dance song for her.’ Some of the parents have quite detailed ideas about the music before they even start writing, and others not so much. But it all comes from the parents so the range is huge.”

The began in Jacobi Medical Center, a New York City public hospital in the Bronx, when a cross-disciplinary team invited WMI to collaborate on a program to support the hospital’s teenage mothers and young parents. Medical staff had observed that the young parents were dealing with high stress levels that sometimes got in the way of their bonding with their infants.

The idea of working with a small group of parents to write personal lullabies for their infants and create a simple recording of the song, evolved into Lullaby’s pilot in 2011. Over the years it has expanded to reach parents in healthcare settings, homeless shelters, high schools and correctional settings. The project, which is now part of WMI’s early childhood and family programs, has nearly 60 organizations worldwide, with well over 4,000 unique lullabies having been written in more than 40 languages — and it’s still growing.

It Starts with a Few Words

The process often starts with the parents being asked to write a letter to their child or to write down their hopes and dreams for themselves as caregivers.

“We ask them where they can imagine their child years from now,” says Tiffany Ortiz, Director of WMI’s early childhood programs. “It serves as a pause button for families to reflect on their parenting experiences and their relationship with their child or child-to-be.

“We have a lullaby journal, which offers a range of prompts. One of the most popular is writing a letter to their baby where parents or caregivers are encouraged to express their hopes and dreams or any stories they want to share with their child. Caregivers are encouraged to think about the language they want to pass down, the cultural rituals within their family they want to pass along or any personal stories about their parenthood experience they want to include.

“We encourage them to think about the melody they want to add to the messages that they wrote, in the right key so they feel comfortable singing this lullaby to their child. We want the song to be something they continue to use, not something that sits on a shelf. We want it to be an active part of families engaging with each other and perhaps passing it down generation to generation, so that it ends up being a beautiful gift to the families.”

My babies, sweet babies,
I love you like crazy.
You’re wonderful and fun,
Sweet like honey buns.

The parents or caregivers are paired with teaching artists and songwriters who work with them to structure lyrics from the key ideas they’ve written, expanding on one another’s ideas and trying out possible melodies and arranging the instrumentation. Accompaniment runs the gamut from piano to marimba, flute to cello, and an array of percussion instruments guaranteed to punctuate and enliven any sentiment. A roster of professional musicians works with the families to create and arrange a song that is uniquely, singularly theirs. The lullaby is recorded for the parent to keep and sing again and again. Each year, some of the new works are selected to be performed at the Hall, some sung by the project’s professional musicians and some by the parents themselves. It’s a delicious process, as plainly seen in of the 2023 Lullaby Project’s Celebration Concert.

And the effect apparently lasts. Now that the project is entering its 13^th year, WMI has started hosting alumni days to invite lullaby writers to come back to the Hall and share how they’re doing.

“Last year we had a family who came with their 8-year-old who said, ‘We still know our song and we still sing it.’” Ortiz says. “They were so excited to be in the space again and to share and revisit their songs. We’re seeing some long-term ripple effects — seeing so many families come back after many years with their kids grown to share how meaningful the experience has been for them.”

However inspiring, performance is not the project’s primary aim or value. The design was to strengthen the bond between parent and child, aid child development and support parent’s health and well-being, all of which have been accomplished — and then some — according to qualitative analysis by arts research firm WolfBrown, which WMI commissioned to evaluate the project from 2011 to 2017. Researchers found “marked differences” in participants’ positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and sense of achievement, key markers for measuring well-being. Some of the lullaby writers who performed their songs had never spoken — much less sung — in front of an audience.

“You can see people being brave,” Johnson says. “A couple of years ago when one of our writers, Anya, performed, she was shaking when she introduced herself and told her story. You could tell that it was hard for her, but she has this amazing voice, and in that moment, you see her bravery and you see all these other people leaning in and encouraging her. It was quite beautiful.” (Watch Anya’s performance of her lullaby, “,” accompanied by teaching artists James and Camila.)

Feeding the Artists

The Lullaby Project has nourished not only the families but the participating musicians and songwriters as well. Johnson says WMI offers the musicians who come into the project professional training and development, along with the resources they need to be successful in their role in supporting the lullaby writers. She also acknowledges that the work isn’t for everyone because not every musician is comfortable with the service aspect of supporting another person’s creativity and process of discovery.

For many though, she says, that has been the most magical part of the process.

“We have many local teaching artists who’ve been part of the project since the inception and continue to come back,” Johnson says. “One said that what feeds them about the project is that they always learn something new about themselves and their community. It isn’t just the parents who are vulnerable. The artists learn from the families in that exchange.

“The artists have created this community of practice where they gather and bring their challenges, they bring something they’re proud of, a song they love that they wrote with someone. Those are durable and generative relationships.”

The process is as much about trust as it is about music, Ortiz says.

“We talk a lot about attunement between parent and child, but there’s quite a bit of attunement that needs to happen among the facilitator, musician and the parent. That requires a level of deep listening, trust-building and a lot of generosity.”

Scaling the Project

Part of the Weill Music Institute’s DNA is to broadly share what they’ve developed, Johnson says. They have designed the Lullaby Project to be nimble, portable and scalable. Although they believe in the superpower of artists, she says, they have looked beyond the professional teaching artists they work with to see who else in a community might be able to bring the project to families most in need. For example, they’re exploring a project with a partner in India that would provide a simple set of video resources that would enable health workers to support lullaby writing in their communities. Their lead partner in Australia is experimenting with creating a library of lullaby music templates to which personalized lyrics could be added, expanding the capacity of lullaby writing without benefit of facilitators.

“The growth has been organic,” Johnson says. “When we moved from Jacobi Medical Center, it was because people wanted to take it other places and were knocking on our door asking if they could take it to a refugee camp in Athens or to this or that place. We have access to extraordinary resources — the Carnegie Hall name, our artistic relationships, our human capital and our partnerships — that enable us to develop things that are often useful in other places. And then give them away.

“We dream about a world in which every parent might be able to write a personal lullaby for their child,” she says. “A colleague of ours often says that when a child is born, so too is a parent and when we think about these personal lullabies, they are just as much for the parent as they are for the child. These lullabies are little vessels of love, and who wouldn’t want more of that in the world.”

Taking Your Toddler to Carnegie Hall

If music be the food of love, then Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) offers a banquet the whole family can feast on. WMI encompasses the Hall’s education and social impact programs, whose mission is to make great music accessible to the widest possible audience. Hundreds of families in New York City and throughout the world have found their way to music through Carnegie Hall’s array of age-appropriate offerings, from live performances to free online resources to spark the curiosity and enthusiasm that can last a lifetime. More than 800,000 people each year engage in WMI’s programs through national and international partnerships, in New York City schools and community settings, and at Carnegie Hall.

The early childhood programs of are designed specifically with babies and toddlers in mind — colorful, lively and sometimes silly — creating musical experiences that feed the developing brain and imagination. Since its inception 12 years ago, the Lullaby Project has been at the heart of the WMI’s early childhood programs, a rich ecosystem that brings music to life in a child’s earliest years.

Resources

• To better understand the effect of music in early childhood development, Carnegie Hall commissioned papers from arts research expert Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf. The first, , points to key reasons why investing in children early and often is critical to healthy development and a successful future — and demonstrates the role music can play in everyday interactions that support children.
• , looks at how and why lullabies make a difference, highlighting how the Lullaby Project helps families come together and imagine a positive future for children, and how writing a lullaby often can support a deeper process of connecting and communicating among parents, grandparents, musicians, staff and community members.
• Inspired by the Lullaby Project, the Bernard van Leer Foundation commissioned WolfBrown to write a paper, , which explores the Lullaby Project alongside early childhood programming from around the world.
• Unwind with Lullabies: Hopes & Dreams In April 2018, Decca Gold (Universal Music Group) released an album of 15 original lullabies written by Lullaby Project participants and performed by world renowned artists including Fiona Apple, the Brentano String Quartet, Lawrence Brownlee, Rosanne Cash, Joyce DiDonato, Angélique Kidjo, Natalie Merchant, Dianne Reeves, Gilberto Santa Rosa and others. The album is available from the  and other online retailers.

Music education – which traditionally has been – is changing with the times. Not since the introduction of the or the growth of has music education undergone such a transformation.

The changes occurring now have been developed to bring more students into school and community music classes at all levels of education, from kindergarten to college.

As a – and as one who is that go above and beyond the traditional band, choir and orchestra offerings – I believe this is one of the most exciting times in the world of music education. Here are five ways that music education is changing in America’s schools:

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1. Students are making their own songs

In 2021, Florida became the first state to offer an for students in high school. As members of the collective, the state’s best student pop singers, drummers, guitarists, DJs, bassists and keyboardists perform their original music in an auditioned group. They perform music from hip-hop to pop and rock.

In 2023, Missouri started – its version of the Florida offering. Students send in an audition video. If selected, they become a member of a band of around 15 people who write songs together and perform at the state conference, along with the best concert band, concert choir and orchestra students in the state.

As of now, for their students.

There are a growing number of opportunities for students to study at the collegiate level. Schools like the , where I teach, have joined established programs at the , the and as places where you can learn how to make hip-hop as well as pop, rock and country, among other styles.

2. Smaller ensembles

In the middle of the 20th century, school music focused on performing primarily classical music arrangements. Since the 1990s, offerings like – with marching percussion and color guard – and , which incorporate contemporary instrumentation, have extended those offerings and broadened the spectrum of acceptable styles.

have popped up in schools all over , featuring smaller, more , modern musical instruments and tools that sometimes includes . They seek to look more like the .

3. Teaching that focuses more on the student

For much of the past 100 years, music teachers have focused on being able to teach large numbers of students – that is, 100 or more. Instructors across the U.S. and Canada teach made up of 200-plus students.

Music instructors are some of the only teachers in the school who want more students in their classes. Pedagogical practice consists of managing large groups of students as efficiently as possible. But this approach tends to discourage individual voice and autonomy. That’s changing. With comes more room for and more .

4. Technology driven performances

Music education has become more and more technology driven, both in its and . In smaller ensembles and in pop music, it’s important to . You do not have to know how to set up a mixing console to have a successful traditional concert band performance.

and are two instruments that have become popular for creating beats and multilayered ambient textures. They satisfy a desire among students to create music that they might hear on the radio but also maybe in a video game that they’re playing or in a movie that they’re watching.

Turntables have gone from being carried around by DJs – along with crates of records to scratch – to hardware devices. Musical effects that are triggered by the performer or someone offstage are . These practices are .

5. Recording in addition to performing

, people have been recording musical sounds. Over that time, individuals have been honing their abilities to . It has become an art in its own right.

The life of a musician is made up of two primary focuses: . While performing is a part of school music education, recording has been almost entirely ignored as something that students do, until now.

Teachers have been able to easily record students’ music only via over the past 20 years.

We are in a new era when school recording studios are more the norm and .

About , largely through traditional bands, choirs and orchestras. But that number could shift as music education continues to evolve to become more about the students and the music that’s dear to them, not just the classics and traditions of old.

, Professor of Music Education,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

“I said, ‘Just open up the door, I can get in myself,’” Ellis remembered.

Prince finally relented, and Ellis wrote and performed in “Graffiti Bridge,” the sequel to “Purple Rain.” 

“It was just the experience of a lifetime.”

Extra credit is a series where The 74’s video team shares interesting tidbits that didn’t make the final cut. Watch the full documentary about Ellis’s school, which uses hip hop to engage who have struggled in traditional schools: Hip Hop Is Saving Teen Lives in Minnesota 

Charlnitta Ellis — also known as “Mama Chi” and the sister of David T.C. Ellis, who founded High School for Recording Arts — encouraged Keys to come to the school.

“This place is a safe haven,” said Tracy Seller, the parent of former HSRA students. “A lot of times, these kids get given up on.”

HSRA, nicknamed “Hip Hop High,” is a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. T.C. Ellis, who had a long, storied music career growing up and recording with Prince, sought to connect with at-risk students through music — something that is deeply rooted in the culture of the Twin Cities. HSRA teaches core subjects through a musical lens, helping students develop skills and agency to tackle real-world issues.

Keys credits HSRA with saving his life, and for putting him on a pathway to be where he is in life now — living in Tennessee with his wife, and working a stable job as a Walmart manager.

“What high school that you know can make you take out all your anger on a beat?” Keys said. “There ain’t nobody getting hurt, that’s amazing to me.”

]]> /article/canadas-grammys-to-honor-justin-bieber-avril-lavigne-alongside-the-music-teacher-of-the-year/ Wed, 11 May 2022 21:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=589160 For 25 years, — Canada’s version of the Grammys — and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Science have supported music education, educators and students across the country via the charity .

Since 2005, the JUNO ceremony has also cast its spotlight on MusiCounts’ Teacher of the Year, honoring music instructors who have demonstrated dedication in developing much needed music programs in front of a national audience. Winners receive $10,000 to help fund their efforts.

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MusiCounts President Kristy Fletcher says the pandemic has made the organization’s work even more urgent. Music programs are often the last to be funded, Fletcher tells The 74, and with cities and schools “feeling the pinch” of COVID-related setbacks, she expects more educators to request funding to restore programs and opportunities that have been reduced or lost amid the public health emergency. The charity also seeks to create curricula relevant to , who may not feel culturally connected to the music already being taught. 

Each year, MusiCounts selects five Teacher of the Year nominees based passion, advocacy, experience, inclusivity, adaptability, recognition, and inspirational. Eligibility requires at least five years of teaching, and having received a grant from to fund their music courses. 

As the awards return to an in-person ceremony this weekend, complete with performances by Avril Lavigne and others, JUNO will spotlight Teacher of the Year finalists like from the David Suzuki Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario. A MusiCounts grant allowed Hamilton to start a hip-hop and R&B program after the school’s Black students told him they weren’t enrolling in music classes because the program prioritized pop and classical music.

“They didn’t feel like their culture, the music that they liked listening to, was represented in the music class,” Hamilton tells The 74.

Hamilton’s “Sounds and Sights of Hip-Hop and R&B” course began at the start of this school year. Seventeen students enrolled from many cultural backgrounds, and for the coming year, more students are expected to sign up. 

Other nominees include Ontario’s Kelly Stronach, who prioritizes inclusivity in her school’s music clubs and programs, and , a K-5 teacher in Manitoba who embraces — an approach to musicianship that integrates music, speech movement and drama. 

“It’s a great way to get them invested in their own learning,” Casselman . “It helps them with their language and their reading, their mathematics, it introduces them to social studies and history.”

Also singled out this year are three-time nominee Sophie Jalbert, who sees music as a tool to help children manage their emotions and reach goals, and Alberta’s Janell Toews, who is being recognized for her work during the pandemic. 

“Our school board bought thousands of dollars worth of bell covers and flute covers so that the kids could still participate [during the pandemic] and that was huge,” Toews “I think that’s another part of the award too is that they were looking for finalists this year that were able to help students to have access to music even during COVID.”

The 2022 Teacher of the Year Award will be bestowed Sunday evening. Americans can stream the JUNO Awards ceremony live beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on , and at . 

]]> /article/band-teacher-kept-school-community-connected-covid/ Tue, 03 May 2022 19:30:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=587931 This is one article in a series produced in partnership with the Aspen Institute’s, spotlighting educators, mentors and local leaders who see community as the key to student success, especially during the turbulence of the pandemic. .

San Antonio high school band leader Alejandro Jaime Salazar knew something was off — really off — when he listened to the Mighty Owl marching band practice one morning this past winter. 

Salazar, a tall man with a friendly face, even when concerned, walked between the rows glancing over shoulders, studying fingers to see what was wrong. 

Finally he stopped them. 

“Raise your hand if you’re on page six,” he said. To his surprise, most of the students in the Highlands High School band hall were not.

So, with a fluttering of pages, the Mighty Owls began again. It was better. 

And it’s getting better all the time. 

This kind of gaffe would have been pretty much unheard of years ago, when the band from Highlands High School in San Antonio consistently earned top marks in competitions, bringing home trophies, plaques, and ribbons.

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But this school year, as the strain of the pandemic has worn on, and on, Salazar now says he takes mistakes in stride. 

After all they’ve been through, all they are still going through, he says he knows it’s going to take time to get back on the same page and playing the same tune. 

“They regressed a lot, but I’m okay with it because we brought them back,” said Salazar who spent the earliest days of the pandemic, March through May 2020, using every tool he had to hunt down more than 70 band members, stay connected to them over Zoom — sometimes with his own baby on his lap — and muster what enthusiasm he could to create structure, routine, and dependability in their lives.

Now that he has them back in the band hall, is able to check in on their mental health, can make sure they are eating and sleeping somewhere safe, he can start to revive their joy of playing, the thing that brought them together in the first place. 

The entire U.S. school system has been in survival mode for the past two years, focused solely on getting kids back into buildings. Now, feeling as if they’re through the worst of it, one band teacher is determined to see his kids thrive again. “We’re bringing music back.”

Seasons of Love

In some ways, bringing the music back is a sign of hope and progress. Back in the spring of 2020 Salazar remembers being happy if he was able to get even a stanza out of his clunky Zoom practices, with his players waiting out the pandemic at home. He says most of his effort then went towards making sure everyone was safe — while some kids were juggling internet connections and noisy houses, others were facing food insecurity, newly unemployed parents, and mental health crises. 

Salazar quickly realized that the band was often students’ strongest connection to school, and the essential resources it could provide — not just individual academics, but the community that was only as strong as its members. 

But in other ways, bringing the music back doubled as a sign of just how much had been taken from the Mighty Owl Band over the last two years.

Sitting down with Salazar this past December, it was difficult to tell if it’s determination, weariness, hope or relief one now hears in Salazar’s voice. Maybe all of those, as he considers what it means to lead a marching band in the middle of a persistent pandemic and an escalating mental health crisis. 

Salazar knows he probably won’t be adding much to the line of trophies in the Highlands High School band hall in southeast San Antonio — not this year, anyway. This year, it’s about using music to strengthen the bonds of the band, the same bonds he’s been relying on for almost two years to keep students within reach, safe from the ravages of isolation.

A lifelong performer, Salazar knows how close a band can be — he still plays trumpet with a group of mariachis. In fact, touring with a band was his original career goal. He eventually pursued teaching so that he could have a stable gig and start a family, and quickly realized giving students life experiences and confidence they didn’t have before was even more fulfilling than focusing on craft alone. 

“I’m very competitive,” he admitted, and is at times envious of the well-resourced bands where students can afford private lessons and well-funded booster clubs make a band director’s every dream come true. But he says his wife, also a teacher, reminds him: “You wouldn’t do well in one of those places where the kids don’t need you. What is a trophy going to do for you?”

It’s great to make beautiful music, sure, he said, but the real reason he’s remained in his role is to see students grow as people, as a team. In sharp contrast to the isolation of the pandemic, he said, band is about more than just music — it’s about being part of something bigger than yourself, caring for others and being cared for, and believing in others and being believed in. It’s also about finding a connection with people you might not otherwise spend time with. 

“I think that’s what’s going to turn this pandemic mentality around for the people who are not having a positive experience right now,” Salazar said, finding more spaces to forge new connections.

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Even before the pandemic, Salazar knew camaraderie among the band was the reason some of his students showed up to school, the reason they kept their grades up, so they could stay eligible. In March 2020, that bond became a lifeline.

When schools closed and students were disappearing by the thousands, Salazar had flute-players tracking down flute-players and trumpet-players tracking down trumpet-players. He tracked down every single one. But making contact once didn’t guarantee a student’s situation was stable. One student became homeless in the early months of the pandemic, and it took a band-wide effort to keep in contact with them. 

Like many, he hoped the pandemic would pass, and kids would be back in formation by marching season. It was not to be, of course. San Antonio ISD brought back only 20 percent of students in September 2020. More and more trickled in throughout the year, but none without scars.

“Their communication skills regressed quite a bit. They forgot how to reach out and ask for help,” he said, adding it’s up to him and his assistant directors to offer it. 

The kids in the band call him their “Band Dad,” he said. “The first time I heard it, it was very odd for me. Now it’s a normal thing.”

As someone who had involved and supportive parents whom he credits with much of his success, being a strong “Band Dad” isn’t a responsibility he takes lightly. He knows other teachers who feel this too, like surrogate parents, whose main job isn’t conveying information or handing out grades but being a consistent, supportive presence. 

Lean On Me

While Salazar’s expertise uniquely qualifies him to be a band director, he’s just one of many adults who can take the time to listen, encourage, and help connect a kid to the help they need. That’s the part of his job he takes more seriously than making sure the horns are on cue and the winds are in tune.

Sometimes Salazar says he just listens. The students trust their band family, but sometimes he has to convince them it’s time to bring a counselor or social worker into the conversation. He said some of his students have seen family members get sick and die. They’ve watched their parents go from stable working class incomes to wondering where next week’s groceries would come from.

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In the depths of the pandemic, he said students couldn’t worry about mastering marching formations or concert pieces, because they were worried about supporting their families, caring for siblings, and keeping up with classwork, he said. Like the virus, those concerns haven’t evaporated entirely. San Antonio ISD only allowed remote learning in a few circumstances at the start of the 2021-22 school year, but a couple of the kids from the band took it.

“They went through so much at home, it’s hard to leave because they have so much to take care of,” Salazar said.

His compassion and care for the kids is bottomless, it seems, but he’s a true believer in the power of a good routine. Even when the entire band was remote, he conducted regular practice, as a way of creating regularity and normalcy when days, nights, weeks, and months were blending together. 

From the earliest days of the pandemic, Salazar felt it was essential to reach every kid, every day. “I want it to be as normal as possible,” he said back in May 2020, “There are kids who are freaking out. So I want to be that consistency in their life if that’s what they need.” 

Even though other teachers only required contact once per week in the early days, he insisted on daily check-ins. “A lot of teachers don’t understand how important the relationships are,” he said in 2020, during the height of the crisis. 

He also believes band can now play a key role in rebuilding the social and emotional skills kids have lost. He thinks back to his own band directors in high school, who emphasized teamwork and conscientiousness just as much as trumpet skills. 

Whereas some activities and sports tolerate selfishness and arrogance from superstars, that’s not how Salazar learned to train the band. ​​”They encouraged me not only to be a good musician but to be a good person,” Salazar said. 

“They’d say, ‘you’re a good player, you know, but you can’t be a jerk.’” 

We Are Family 

For those who are now back at school in person, the majority of the band, Salazar expects hard work. He drills them on the fundamentals, he connects the effort they put in at band practice to the character they will need to succeed in the future. But the support and acceptance he gives in return is just as committed — he’s all in. “There’s days when I feel like I don’t make an impact at all, but that’s not true,” he said. He knows band is making a difference, because the kids prioritize it. Given the crushing stress of the pandemic, he said, when kids are showing up for 6:45am band practice, he knows they see the value in what they are getting. 

“We’re here all the time,” said flute-player Victoria Martinez, “This is my family.” 

Martinez is a junior and a drum major. While her freshman year was cut short by the pandemic, marching season in the fall and concert season in the winter had given her a taste of what it feels like to win, and a vision of the triumphs that awaited in her years as an upperclassman. 

Now, her perspective is different, she said. Returning to in person school at the end of last year, spring 2021, she could see the toll of the pandemic on her peers, many of whom felt disconnected. Those who have band have somewhere to reestablish that connection. 

“My freshman year success was about trophies,” Martinez said. “My junior year it’s about giving it all to the band.”

Giving their all doesn’t mean perfection. It can’t. The band is inexperienced. Practicing at home in apartments or full houses was not an option for some. Parents were working, siblings were studying. It wasn’t the right environment to pick up a trumpet. 

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To bring back the music, Salazar said, he’s got to do it note by note, and he needs space to do that. 

“We’re expected to come back 100%,” said Salazar, referring to statewide reinstatements of academic testing and band competitions. “It’s like we’re pre-COVID again, and that’s not realistic. They want to call it a rebuilding year, but it’s not a rebuilding year if we’re not able to go back and work on these fundamental skills.”

This is the kind of basic back-and-forth that takes up time. Salazar reviews breathing and posture. Basics. It’s tedious, but the kids are up for it. Band President Isaiah Vigil urges them on, reminds them to focus.

Vigil is only a sophomore, and this is his first year with a full varsity band, but as one of the few who were in school in person all year last year, he’s actually one of the more well-rehearsed. Being the president, as a sophomore, he said, is, “Weird…really weird.” 

But he likes it. Band teaches responsibility, determination, and respect, he said. Getting it right, practicing, showing up — even when motivation is lacking, those are things the band members do for each other. That’s the thing about band, the members said: No one succeeds or fails alone. If a trumpet wants to sound good, they need the other trumpets to be on cue too. It works the other way too, even when individual members might be tempted to slack off, have an “off day,” they still don’t want to let the band down.

“They really care about each other a lot,” Vigil said of his bandmates.

Better Days

Salazar knows one of the main contributions of a band program is motivation and connection it provides. It’s why some kids come to school, he said. Students have to be academically eligible to perform, and pre-pandemic, that kept the kids on their toes. 

Now, he said, no matter how hard they work, eligibility has been a struggle. 

Even with about 70 kids enrolled in band, Salazar went through most of marching season with about half that on the field. It’s difficult to prepare for competitions with so many students at risk of sitting out. 

But he’s also seeing growth. At the beginning of the year, he said, it was difficult to get through the first four measures of a piece, basically the first line. At a competition a few months later they earned a second tier recognition at a competition. Salazar celebrated it as much as he had cheered the top marks the band had gotten at that same competition in previous years. “The growth was there.” 

He posted the win on social media, and band directors and composers around the country celebrated with him.

Bittersweet Symphony 

Jose Pulliza hadn’t imagined quite so much growth in his senior year. He wants to be an engineer, so he pictured himself playing his baritone, having a blast with his friends while they earned high marks and trophies.

“It’s nothing like I would have thought,” Pulliza said, reflecting on the difference between his freshmen and senior year. “A lot changed — I grew.” 

The pandemic struck at the end of Pulliza’s sophomore year, just before the band was set to perform in San Antonio’s lively parade season. His junior year would be spent entirely at home, as his parents weren’t willing to take the risk of sending him back to school in person. He didn’t march in half-time shows or perform from the stands as the air turned cold during football season of his junior year. 

“A year and half really threw me off,” Pulliza said. “It was like being a freshman again.” 

He quickly got back on top of his academics — he’s been accepted at the University of Texas at San Antonio — but when it came to band, rebuilding meant more than just polishing his own skills on the baritone.

Pulliza may have been rusty, but he was one of the only members of the band who had actually completed at least one full year. Salazar would need him in leadership. 

Pulliza auditioned for drum major, successfully, and he’s been surprised how he’s taken to the role. The responsibility bonded him to the band, helped him settle back into a community. 

“People don’t understand how good band is for an individual,” he said. He’s focused on growing as a person, and that’s the message he passes on to his bandmates: success is measured by how you show up, not what accolades you get.

“We just give it our all. We don’t worry about the rewards,” Pulliza said. 

One Love

Salazar knows the slim odds that few, if any, of the Mighty Owls will go on to musical professions. But what they are getting from band can still carry over into their future. Passion, caring for each other, hard work, commitment — these are themes in Salazar’s lectures to the band, which he admits are more frequent than they used to be as he focuses on social and emotional health. 

“You make them a winner by being there for them, supporting them, and by making this a safe space where they can express themselves.” 

Whether it’s the notes on the page, or the melody in their laughter, or the harmony as they work together — that’s what brings the music back.

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to both the Weave Project and The 74.

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Lead Image: San Antonio high school band leader Alejandro Jaime Salazar (Bekah McNeel)

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