I-Pals: Music Unites Two Continents

April 6, 2005

By I-Pals

It's rarely hard to get undergrads to talk about music. For most of them, music is like a second language. They understand it intuitively, even when they don't necessarily "speak" it by performing. Music is therefore a natural vehicle for the I-Pals project that faculty from The College of Staten Island and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa have devised in order to encourage a cultural exchange between their students.

Harnessing the technological resources of both institutions, Music Professors William R. Bauer from CSI and Diane Thram from Rhodes University will supervise a series of three workshops devoted to indigenous musics from each continent. Taking place in the videoconference labs at each campus, these workshops will capitalize on the Internet's potential for generating collaboration between students here at CSI and their counterparts at Rhodes University.

The workshops will probe a feature of music that bridges these two worlds: vocal expression. The thread of the discussion will follow the story of the human voice and the ways people release the impulse to speak and sing in the music they perform. In the first two workshops, live performances of vocal music by the North American jazz vocalist Marguerite Jeunemann and a vocal ensemble of Xhosa people from South Africa will illustrate ways the musics of these two continents may be compared and contrasted.

These experiences will provide a springboard for discussions of cross-cultural continuities and discontinuities. In the course of the project, each student will be paired up with an International Partner in Learning, an I-Pal, with whom he or she will collaborate for the duration of the project. The third videoconferencing session will consist of an informal symposium in which the I-Pals present the results of their own investigation into examples of vocal music they have selected. Taking part in this project will enable students to discover ways that culture provides the foundation upon which stands each musical idiom and every musical experience.

In generating a productive sharing of scholarship and perspectives and promoting links between these two universities, the I-Pals project engenders crosscultural understanding, addressing the present need for positive relations between the United States and other countries.

Schedule

Friday 4/8
Friday 4/22
Friday 5/13

Each session will consist of two 20-minute long segments, with a 10-minute break in-between.

The sessions will run as follows:

9:00-9:10, set up
9:10-9:30, first segment
9:30-9:40, break
9:40-10:00, second segment

Objectives

1. Using videoconferencing technology, Professor Bauer and five of his students at CSI will meet (in real time) with Professor Diane Thram and five of her students from Rhodes University on three Fridays 4/8, 4/22, and 5/13.

2. In two of the three encounters, the students will experience live performances, telecast onsite via broadband at each of the campuses. On 8 April, from CSI, a jazz singer will demonstrate jazz vocal repertoire and techniques, and will relate these to the jazz vocal performance tradition. On 22 April, from Rhodes, Xhosa performers will demonstrate characteristic repertoire and techniques, and will relate these to their performance tradition.

On both occasions, the performers will discuss cultural aspects of the music in question and will be available for a question-and-answer segment. Faculty will facilitate a discussion about these two kinds of music, to help students discover the perspectives of musicians from the different culture and to help them share their own perspectives on the music with these musicians.

3. Before the first workshop session, the faculty will assign each of their students a counterpart from the other campus, an International Partner in Learning (I-Pal). During the time between workshop sessions, students will develop a rapport with their I-Pals. Cultivated through Internet exchanges via e-mail, the Blackboard web site, chat rooms, and Instant Messages (IMs), this rapport will enable the students to collaborate with their international counterparts. After the project, this rapport may continue, at the discretion of the students.

4. In preparation for the final videoconferencing session, the students will confer with their I-Pals about musical examples they have selected, and generate a list of research questions regarding the cultural and technical aspects of these examples.

5. In a final videoconferencing session, the students will present the most salient discoveries they made. Given that this is a pilot project, the character of this session will be somewhat informal. But it will give students an opportunity to share the experiences they had exploring the music they selected with their I-Pal.

6. In all of the sessions, the students will be encouraged to take part in discussions of the music and culture they experienced. These discussions will help to draw their attention to specific features of each kind of music and the culture from which each kind of music originates. The discussions will also serve to generate a mutual sharing of perceptions, in an effort to illustrate areas of commonality and areas of difference, and to validate both. Students will be encouraged to share their perceptions, and to correct misperceptions, in the course of these discussions.