One of the things my Grade 6 music teacher had us do was formal analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody. She basically walked us through it socratically, identifying the genres of the different sections and then pinpointing precisely what characteristics made it that genre. We also read the lyrics, described the plot, watched the music video, and sang through the song ourselves a few times, having fun with the "Galileo! Galileo!" bit and headbanging à la Wayne's World. Along the way, she gave us a brief overview of Queen's other work, including We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions, which came in handy for sports tournaments. It was a good approach that music analysis more accessible and comprehensible than the traditional approach of using classical music, and it got us listening to and appreciating music that was slightly before our time, which is rather a big thing for a teacher to achieve with 11-year-olds.
It wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I learned that Freddie Mercury was queer and died of AIDS - and, actually, he died of AIDS probably just months before we started looking at his music in class, and this in a time and place where that would have been rather scandalous. My initial uncensored internal mental reaction (which I know is inappropriate, that's why it stayed uncensored and internal) was "But that's the guy who wrote the music we used for headbanging and sports!" I was rather shocked that I'd been enjoying his music all these years without having any idea that he was queer or that he had AIDS.
Which, now that I think about it, was probably a very deliberate choice on the part of my teacher. That time and place were more homophobic than I care to admit, and, while I didn't grok AIDS yet, I'm sure people were far more judgemental about it than they are today. But my teacher helped her students escape from this closedmindedness by choosing music that was pedagogically ideal for teaching analysis, unquestionably a cultural touchstone, and just happened to have been created by someone who was later diagnosed with AIDS. She never got into the private lives of the artists, we looked only at the music. But she got this particular bit of rock canon into our heads and normalized, setting us up for an "ah-ha!" moment at some undefined point later in life, when we'd learn that he'd died of AIDS and go "Whaaaa? But he was just a guy!"
Exactly. Point made. Well done, Ms. L!
7 comments:
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http://www.merkaba.org/audio/aids.html/
Huh?
Very cool. I'm not clear on whether Mercury was alive at the time you learned the song? Because he was in the closet his entire life, and would never public admit he had AIDS. He finally did so, practically on his deathbed. So your teacher was also honouring his wishes in that way.
I think it would have been shortly after he died. This was the 1991-1992 school year (Sept. 91 to June 92). The internet tells me Freddie Mercury died in November 1991, and the release date for Wayne's World was February 1992. Since we had the Wayne's World reference, it would have been between February and June 1992.
Music in grade six for me meant playing the ukulele! We had limited classical music listening during the preceding two years; every selection was tainted with Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner references.
I wasn't in the optional band class during middle school. So I had the generalized singing & sitting around class. As best as I can recall: the only 20th century songs we studied in grade eight (early 80s) were Yesterday and Hey Jude by the Beatles.
Probably half of that school year was spent singing those same two songs over and over. 'Hey Jude, you're just not worthwhile enough for a girl you are interested in. Hey Jude you never will be, so be a little sad, give it up, and later be less so.' And: 'Yesterday. I'm not half the man I used to be. To be honest, I wasn't half the man back then either. Yesterday. She rightly left me of course.'
Perfectly innocent songs by themselves. Taken without ever hearing of any(?!) other Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, Elton John songs ... that is called brainwashing.
Let's hope some of the following comment replies don't surge up so much this time. ;) Queen would have been too new at the time for my school class use.
Ukuleles would be cool! Then at least you'd have a foundation in strings. The best we had before high school were recorders, which are dead easy and you can learn in 15 minutes from a book. They did woodwinds in high school, so they really should have diversified.
As for the Beatles, the closest we ever did was Imagine in Grade 5. We had enormous fun saying "hell", which we still considered a swear word at that age. In retrospect, my teacher had been teaching Grade 5 for decades. She knew exactly what she was doing.
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