I'm excited to try this in the classroom! The activity stands well on its own in most grade levels, but it has a lot of potential in music instruction too. Few people stop to really think about what music is or isn't. It would be easy to do audio excerpts and have students define it as music or non-music.
One of the biggest barriers I run into is students (and even adults) who think that rap and hip hop is not real music because although instruments are played, people are speaking rather than singing. If that is true, then can Arnold Schoenberg's "A Survivor from Warsaw" not music? Or does Schoenberg get a pass? If so, why? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWai0SEpUQ (trigger warning: antisemitism and violence related to the early 20th century Warsaw Uprising)
How about "Hamilton: An American Musical?" It won a Pulitzer for drama.
This sort of activity can lead students to realize that all musical genres contain works of serious artistic merit and should not be discounted as art simply because you do not prefer them.
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