10 “Rules” for Choosing Diverse Choral Repertoire
When we talk about diversity, the conversation often centers around race and ethnicity. I would encourage you to embrace a more holistic approach to diversity. One of our goals as a music teacher is to allow ALL students to see themselves within the music. This means choosing a variety of music that represent different:
Composer Identities (Gender, Race, Sexuality)
Countries of Origin
Languages
Religious Implications
Styles
Musical Time Periods
Ranges/Tessitura
Musical or Teaching Concepts
2. Take a Chance
I’ll admit it…. Sometimes programming diverse music is scary. We don’t want to offend anyone and we don’t want to alienate students or their parents. And frankly, sometimes our communities are not as open-minded as we would like to think. However, we have a responsibility to our students, to our communities, and to society to introduce different types of music to our students. If we don’t, who will?
3. Start With Your Students
A great place to start is with your students. Find out about their cultural heritage or the language they speak at home. Ask about their interests and what sparks light in their eyes. Video game music? Taking Japanese at the local community college? Maybe they speak Arabic at home with their grandmother. Just ask!
As you program more diverse music, find an expert to help. It could be a student, colleague, or community member. Reach out to native language speakers, experts in the musical style, or someone with more experience. Students LOVE being an expert! Some of my favorite language-teaching moments were when I was able to have a student teach their peers the language they speak at home. It gives them a sense of pride, leadership, and ownership. And in turn, it teaches the rest of the class more about one of their own classmates!
5. Don’t Wait for an Assigned Month
Don’t wait for Hispanic Heritage month to teach a song in Spanish! Don’t save the Spiritual or Jazz piece for Black History month in February. Sing it now. Program it now. This is repertoire that we should be doing all year. And if we wait for “the month,” your students will see right through it.
6. Think Outside of the Box
How many songs can treble voices sing about flowers? Or basses about boats? Gender-specific and heteronormative music isn't bad to perform, but music to be done in moderation and in balance.
I might get a lot of hate for this one, but I’m going to go for it anyway. If you’re pulling music from your library on Tuesday to start teaching Wednesday, you may not have balanced, diverse programming. Unless you have an AMAZING music library! Diverse repertoire requires intentionality. And many older school libraries were not built with that intention from day one. Be organized and plan ahead. I recommend using a spreadsheet to track music for the year. Click HERE to access my FREE Repertoire Planning Spreadsheet (via Google Sheets).
8. Consider Your Concert Programming
This one may go without saying and many of you probably start here. However, I’d like for you to look over each concert “set” to make sure it’s balanced across the choirs. Ensure that each ensemble has a balanced set. Typically, each of my choirs perform 3-5 songs per concert. So I’m looking at how many are in a foreign language, how many musical time periods are represented, the composer make-up, and balance between sacred and secular. I’m also considering which songs can be learned by singing them in solfege, the musical concepts, and any challenges or strengths of the ensemble paired with the piece.
9. Plan Over the Year
Here’s where the spreadsheet comes in handy. Expand your view from each choir, each concert, and look over your selections for the entire year. Is it balanced over the year? Are you proud of the experience represented by each of the choirs’ selections? I usually program the entire year in July. Yup, I’m one of those crazy people. Of course, I frequently make changes, but this gives me a framework to start the year. It also helps ensure the diversity of my programming and helps prevent me from pulling music on a Friday to teach on Monday! (Although it still happens!)
10. Choose Quality Literature
Above all else, choose quality literature. Don’t choose music because it “checks the box”. I was guilty of this early on in my career. You will be much more excited to teach diverse repertoire that you feel is quality. And your students will be too! Does it take more work to find? Sometimes. Is it worth it? 100%!
Now this last one isn’t a “rule” for choosing music. But it’s important. Show diverse choir recordings. Your students deserve to see what the world of music has to offer and they deserve to see people who represent THEM in recordings and videos. It’s not always possible to find, but it’s worth the search.
Here are some specific places to find diverse repertoire, as well as some of my favorite websites to purchase new music:
https://www.earthsongschoralmusic.com/