Obtaining Positive Attitudes in Multicultural Music

Knowing the background and history of an ethnic culture is a beautiful thing! It gives an individual a sense of belonging and wholeness. Music connects people to their roots in a way nothing else can. When introducing multicultural music to my elementary students, the students showed a great deal of disrespect, dislike and aloofness to the new music. When music was introduced from the students' own ethnic cultural background, similar attitudes were represented and displayed. I knew that changing my students' perception and attitude was going to be an uphill climb. I also had to do some digging to find out why these children had such negative attitudes, what was taught to them before I arrived at their school, how extensive did the state standards recommend educators teach in this area, and lastly question the preparedness of educators to teach multicultural music. This action research seeks to question student behavior, research and assess collected, and present findings and results.