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By Katie Dohman Professor Akosua Addo grew up listening to her mother singing Jamaican folk music as they walked the roads of Ghana together. Half-Jamaican, half-Ghanaian, learning about and teaching music around the world is literally in her DNA. “I am especially gratified I am paying homage to my mom,” she says. “To be back in the same country where my mom grew up, teaching the appreciation of that music … those were feelings of affirmation and joy.” With years of conversation and collaborative forums behind her about international music education, Addo married her impressive career knowledge with the Organization for Strategic Development in Jamaica and Project Good Works Jamaica to ask Jamaican teachers this question: What music curriculum is culturally appropriate to teach to your students at this time in history? “There’s a shift in the curriculum to reflect what goes on in North America,” Addo says. “We cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater,” she continues. “Globalization is ingrained in curriculum because of the country’s history of colonialism. But to what extent do you look at your own music and make sure it has a place in curriculum? Not just in your own music, but your own ways of knowing, learning, and resourceful sustainability? We ask, what have you traditionally used to make music and what have you sustainably repurposed for your children to use? That is the direction I am pushing.”
AKOSUA ADDO, along with support from a Fulbright and a team of collaborators, is bringing folk music back to the forefront of music education around the world. 10 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Addo wasn’t sure what kind of reception to expect for the program, which offered a workshop for teachers at Church Teachers College, Mandeville, and lessons for preschoolers. She had traveled to Jamaica before and led study abroad programs there—but would teachers and students be interested in these folk music ideas? When the plane landed, 55 teachers had signed up for the workshop, which focused on art integration into their curriculum. The day before the event, 120 teachers had signed up. In the
