The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) will offer its first Smithsonian Folkways certificate course in World Music Pedagogy, in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the world’s largest global collections of musical instruments, MIM aims to enrich our world by collecting, preserving, and making accessible an astonishing variety of instruments and performance videos from nearly every country in the world. Course participants will engage in the study of world music through participatory events that focus on learning culture through music (song, movement and dance, instrumental music). Participants will be guided through MIM exhibits and into the archive of recordings from Smithsonian Folkways that fit the needs of diverse learners of all ages, so to understand world cultures through music as it can be learned by children, youth, and adults in university and community settings. Small group sessions will help to decipher and discuss applications for various teaching contexts and aims. Course faculty include MIM educators, artist-musicians, culture bearers, and experienced teachers. Click here for more information.

West Virginia University's School of Music will host its fifth Smithsonian Folkways World Music Pedagogy course. This weeklong professional development course is intended for K-12, university, and community educators interested in designing innovative curricula that connect K-12 music programs with local and global musical traditions. Daily workshops will feature several musical cultures including Central Appalachia, Brazil, and West Africa as led by WVU faculty and guest artists. Teachers will develop a foundation in world music pedagogy and explore the rich ethnographic audio, film, and print resources of Smithsonian Folkways. Teachers successfully completing the course will receive documentation from the Smithsonian Institute certifying specialized study in world music pedagogy. For more information click here. Lead faculty include: Janet Robbins (pedagogy), Travis Stimeling (Appalachia), Mike Vercelli (West Africa, Brazil), and Juliana Cantarelli Vita (Northeast Brazil, pedagogy).

The University of Washington will offer a 40-hour intensive course in World Music Pedagogy, with emphasis on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Audio, video, print, electronic, and human resources will be featured, as well as noteworthy ethnomusicological issues, with the aim of facilitating student learning of culturally unfamiliar practices. Participants will engage in global and local cultures through song, movement/dance experience, and instrumental music, and will be introduced to strategies in the use of “culture-bearing musicians” and recordings from the archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and the Routledge World Music Pedagogy series. Enrolled participants will join together to share particular means of teaching world music cultures to children, youth, and adults in culturally sensitive ways, and will receive documentation from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Washington that certifies their specialized study. Featured musical cultures include Bulgaria, Gospel (African American), India (Hindustani), Indonesia (gamelan), Mexico (and Tejano), Senegal (Wolof), Turkey, and Zimbabwe, and musical and pedagogical sessions led by faculty Amanda C. Soto, Thione Diop, Phyllis Byrdwell, Jocelyn Moon, Shannon Dudley, Patricia Shehan Campbell, Christopher Roberts, and others. See course information at www.worldmusicpedagogy.com.

At the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, a week-long course in World Music Pedagogy will lead participants to learning local and global cultures through song, movement, instrumental music, and the integration of cultural understandings. Recordings from Smithsonian Folkways will be featured alongside visits with culture-bearing community musicians, all for purposes of learning the music and ways in which it can be taught/learned in classes of music for children, youth and adults in university and community settings. Enrolled participants will join together to share particular means of teaching world music, and will receive a certificate from the Smithsonian Institution on achievement in World Music Pedagogy. Graduate credit (3 units) is an available option. Karen Howard is lead teacher, along with Tim O’Keefe, Siama Matazungidi, Dallas Johnson, Colleen Casey Nelson, Nyssa Brown, Skye Sanford, Joko Sutrisno Bob Walser, and others on the vocal and instrumental music and dance of the Balkans, Puerto Rico, Arabic music, the Congo, Japan, and the Javanese gamelan (and more!). For more information, please contact Karen Howard via email at karen.howard@stthomas.edu.