Bridging the Generation Gap: A Music Appreciation Class Project

For those of us who teach non-majors, the music appreciation course is quintessential opportunity to inspire—our one-shot with that person sitting in the back row who just might turn out to be an avid consumer of many types of music, and whose life would be measurably improved, if only we do our job right. That is perhaps the most difficult task that anyone can face in higher education.

In this presentation, I would like to break off a small piece of that task and share with you one project that I have created for my “Introduction to Music” classes. This project has two stated goals: 1) to explore the different music preferences of different generations; and, 2) to learn more about the immediate history of American music (approximately the last 50 years or so). In order to accomplish this project, each student is instructed to interview his parents and grandparents, asking them specific questions about the music they liked as teens and young adults, and the music that they like now. The resulting paper consists of a narrative describing the interviews, together with research gathered about the music and musicians. If time permits, the students also share their results in a group discussion format.

I believe that this project enables students not only to engage with the music of the immediate past, but also to connect with their families in a novel way—one which they may not have considered before. In my lecture, I will present this project in more detail, as well as excerpts from the students’ papers.