By Nancy Modell
My discontent and sadness over the ugly rhetoric and the lack of inclusiveness in U.S. society led me to protest musically in November 2020. The result was a student music program to combat this: Music from Our Cultural Heritage. Unfortunately, I sense we’ve returned to those contentious times, leading me to share my thoughts here with the wider Suzuki community. I strive to create a safe place in my studio for all my students, no matter their background. Through music, we can dispel “othering” and instead welcome multicultural sensitivity.
After over forty-eight years of teaching, I am still in awe of the Suzuki repertoire, especially its sequencing, which elicits high-level results from the earliest pieces. Although it was compiled long before our current cultural conversations about inclusivity, Suzuki Piano Book One includes many selections from around the world chosen for their pedagogical value. Even so, there is an ongoing debate among Suzuki teachers about whether the core Suzuki repertoire is relevant and engaging to certain student populations today. One admirable exception is the Suzuki voice repertoire, which encompasses many varied cultures through songs in different languages.
During the pandemic, online learning offered me new insights about underrepresented composers. I was privileged to hear recitals introducing music composed exclusively by Black composers who, I’m embarrassed to admit, I had never heard of before. The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy sponsored online town halls about diversity in music, focusing specifically on Latino and Black composers. These panel discussions were raw and honest and provided information about music by Black and Latino composers that could easily be added to or substituted for standard repertoire to broaden our students’ repertoire. In more recent programs, they’ve delved into works by Asian, Native American, and women composers. To enrich online piano lessons during the pandemic, I emailed students a weekly listening and coloring page from Jenny Boster’s coloring books from theplayfulpiano.com. Sharing these piano works from outside the Suzuki repertoire inspired me and my students to create repertoire bucket lists that they look forward to learning in the future.
These experiences made me think about how I could further expand my own students’ horizons. The result was a new program, Music from Our Cultural Heritage, held on the Sunday following Thanksgiving weekend, where students shared music from their family’s cultural heritage.
In preparation, I had conversations with my students about their families’ backgrounds, and from there, I chose level-appropriate music for each of them from various folksong books. Some students shared recordings of music they wanted to learn, and they absorbed it by ear—an easy undertaking for a Suzuki student!
That year, the music represented a wide range of heritages: the African-American Somebody’s Knockin’ at Your Door; the Brazilian folk melody, Ciranda, Cirandinha (Circle Game) utilized by Villa-Lobos in O Polichinelo that appears in Suzuki Piano Book Six; a Cuban lullaby, Duérmete Mi Niño (Sleep, My Child); the Chinese 彩云追月 (Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon); the Scottish Auld Lang Syne; a Portuguese folk dance melody, Malhão Malhão (Winnower, Winnower); and South African Lisa Se Klavier (Lisa’s Piano). One family’s ancestors arrived on the Mayflower—that student played British composer Vaughan Williams’s piano solo of A Fantasy on Greensleeves.
Music from Our Cultural Heritage was initially conceived as a reading program to motivate students to read new music scores. When music was unavailable or for non-readers, students created their own original arrangements. Unlike our more formal recitals with memorized pieces, students were encouraged to use the scores. Most students presented two short selections representing two sides of their family. While this program certainly enhanced the students’ reading ability, it also fostered a feeling of belonging, relevance, and pride in their family’s background based on interesting conversations with their parents about their family history. The students, their parents, and grandparents cherished this event. The printed program included the original language of each piece. I was excited about the graphic I found for the program cover: a world map made of music notes!
This program piqued my students’ interest, and since then, they have been excited to delve into repertoire from more diverse composers. Both boys and girls have performed music by women composers in addition to Theodora Dutton’s Christmas Day Secrets from Suzuki Piano Book One. Their exposure to women composers marks an improvement compared to when I studied piano. I maintain a collection of children’s music books in my studio featuring music and musicians from various countries and cultures to spark their curiosity. Students are encouraged to borrow books and listen to music related to a composer or a specific composition in the books.
I continue to enhance the incredible Suzuki piano repertoire with music from many sources, and I encourage other Suzuki teachers to explore this possibility. I have presented “Lesser-Known Gems by U.S. Women Composers” at the 12th Taubman Piano Festival at MSU in 2023, NJ, the 2024 SAA Conference, the Fourth Encuentro Mexicano Del Método Suzuki, Puebla, the Second Festival Internacional Suzuki in Guadalajara, and, this July, the Piano Pedagogy Summer Institute, Princeton, NJ.
Music has healing powers and brings people together. Listening to all kinds of music broadens our experience as human beings. Students love having choices. Offering supplemental repertoire by underrepresented cultures and composers allows students to weigh in and choose what they love, enabling them to discover music they otherwise wouldn’t encounter. It’s a simple gift we can all give to our students. In the words of Dr. Suzuki, “Music can save the world.”