Music

It is said that music is a universal language that simultaneously unites disparate peoples, as well as defines a people through shared cultural norms, rituals, and expression. Through music, people tap into their ancestral roots to celebrate life’s cycles, express emotion, create culture, and communicate with spirit. Music allows us to feel and share those feelings through creating and listening together. Concurrently, combining poetry, music, and visual arts serves as a language that bridges people who otherwise would have a hard time communicating. Often, people from diverse backgrounds can unite by sharing this common experience even though their realities might be dramatically different from one another. MAPS builds these bridges!

MAPS Music is all about:

• Students learn about writing songs through exploration of melody, rhythm, instrumentation, vocals, arrangement, lyrics, and how to create the desired emotional effect in a musical composition.
• Students write songs to the poems provided by the partner poetry school.
• Students learning how writing songs to poems can help them better understand the English language, rhythm, and verse to express their deepest feelings.
• Exploring with other students how best to build the chord structure and melody to most effectively create the proper emotion to support the poem.
• Learning how to collaborate with students from different and diverse backgrounds to accomplish a finished work of art together.
• Learning to have a better understanding of what other students from different backgrounds think about, how they live their lives, and express themselves.
• Preparing and performing the songs in a professional theater in front of a live audience.
• Come together with the poets and share how the music and songs were created to express the written word.