Prior to every presentation, guest lecture, panel event, or other speaking engagement, the presenting entity will ask for some version of my bio to give audience members unfamiliar with me some idea of my background and experience. The one at the end of this article is condensed yet more thorough than the Wikipedia page about me, but still not as exhaustive (or exhausting) as what’s on my website. No matter which bio people read, it is very clear that I’ve devoted much of my career to music and education in one form or another. Not all of the moves mentioned in my bio were planned or pre-considered; many of them were not. I have tried to stay as open as possible to any adventures the unfolding road in front of me might have in store, and I have done my best to keep my skills sharpened and up-to-date so that I might be ready for new challenges and opportunities.
Along the way, and with the help and support of gifted colleagues, I’ve developed a music-making aesthetic and a set of pedagogical priorities which help guide my activities in these areas. There are so many important things to consider when working with today’s young people on musical skills — not the least of which is the shifting function of music in our lives. Young people these days receive, listen to, learn, and make music differently compared to any previous generation. It is my opinion that educators must adjust to that development, not the other way around. Here are a few key ways I feel music educators can both honor their historical training and embrace the 21st century zeitgeist:
Discard Received Notions about what Constitutes “High Art”
I have this memory. During an intense rehearsal, a middle school teacher told my fellow percussionists and me that “Drummers are a dime a dozen.” She was frustrated with one of my fellow percussionists who was threatening to quit the school band. This teacher was a White woman in her 30s and the percussion section was entirely BIPOC boys. I understood that she was demonstrably devaluing our role and telling us we didn’t really matter, but I didn’t fully understand why. At the time I was unable to associate her assertion with the fact that percussionists primarily work with rhythm. Over time it became obvious to me that in a white supremacist mindset, rhythm-centric and body-centric music and art are often considered less-than. That view directly stems from a dehumanizing view of Black and Brown people and our creations, and draws philosophically tenuous lines in the sand about what can be considered “meaningful art”.
An example of this revolves around sampling. The composer Steve Reich employed proto-sampling techniques via tape loops in the 60s with his pieces “It’s Gonna Rain” and “Come Out”. Reich is absolutely considered to be one of the world’s most important living composers, if not the most important living composer, partially because of his groundbreaking work utilizing pre-existing recordings. It is not a coincidence that 20 years later when Black and Brown kids from the South Bronx started using little loops of records to make new music, no one called them “avant-garde composers”. It was tacitly understood that “high art” was not their place. I believe that no matter one’s background, it is important to release received notions about tiered “value” in artistic expression, and to audit your personal default settings as to what deserves to be elevated or devalued. This is not only because it might preclude you from telling some kid that they are a dime a dozen — but also because it will open you up to a wider array of beauty and creation.
Acknowledge Unexpected Connections
In 2020 the Freight & Salvage Education Department launched an initiative called Hip-Hop is Folk Music. It’s a startling assertion for some, and one that only we seemed to be saying for a while, though it seems to have now entered the public thoughtspace. It’s the central focus of the symposiums we’re doing with Berkeley Unified School District this year. We wanted to illuminate the ways that historical folk traditions and contemporary remix culture are similar — very similar sometimes. We talk about folks using whatever tools they have around to make music — whether it’s a banjo, a jug, or a turntable. We talk about how taking an existing work and making something new with it is an age-old part of the folk tradition, but it’s now called Remix Culture. People ask me if we get a lot of resistance from folkies or hip-hop heads about this. Nope. Zero. People like to be shown the ways they’re connected to others in meaningful ways, and our teachers do a great job of demonstrating those connections. When I was an elementary school teacher, the one quote I kept up on my wall all year round was “We are more alike my friends than we are unlike” — from Maya Angelou. This is as true for adults as it is for 2nd graders, and — especially in these times— it is important to be reminded of that.
Encourage Music Creation — in All Forms
My son is a flautist — he LOVES the fact that I possess no skills on his instrument. He definitely wants to carve out his own path in this area. I insert myself subtly, usually related to practice habits, concert readiness, improvisation, and recording gear. Fortunately, he has had and still has very good teachers and coaches. When he grumbles about his scale and étude work from his classical teacher, I remind him that those exercises will ultimately inform and uplift his soloing with the jazz band, which he really enjoys. I remind him that the thing to do with his skills is to create. One thing that I really appreciate about his main school music teacher is that he requires the students to pursue a self-directed music creation project as a goal for the year. In today’s world, where hit singles can be recorded on phones with music apps and no traditional instruments, it’s important for today’s students to be immersed in contemporary music creation alongside their studies of their traditional instruments. Otherwise, you’re sending them out into a world that was already pretty tough for musicians, and now is even tougher. Encourage collaboration amongst your students and let them know any musical tool they want to use is cool! If this is new to you, you can start by checking out these music-making apps: https://plus.pointblankmusicschool.com/7-essential-free-apps-for-making-music-on-the-go/
Though the business of music is constantly changing, the spiritual and visceral power of music is steady and unwavering. Thank you for keeping it alive with your work — and let me know how and what you’re doing out there!
PC Muñoz is a composer, producer, writer, and education program designer based in San Francisco. An artist with a “deep social conscience…who uses music to connect cultures and communities together” (Anil Prasad, Innerviews), Muñoz’s singular aesthetic bridges the gap between musique concréte, pop songcraft, and the insistent rhythms of funk and hip-hop. His body of work as an artist and producer includes GRAMMY®-nominated contemporary classical music with composer/cellist Joan Jeanrenaud as well as projects with rock legend Jackson Browne, poet/chanteuse Ingrid Chavez, Oakland hip-hop heavyweight Kev Choice, a cappella jazz masters SoVoSo, virtuoso Van-Anh Vo, and more. He is the 2022 Quinteto Latino Composer-in-Residence, a current Mosaic America Fellow, a former Board Governor for the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy, and one of the featured writers in the 2019 award-winning collection from University of Hawai’i Press, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia (2019). He was a full-time classroom teacher in Bayview-Hunter’s Point (San Francisco) in the 90s, the first Director of Education for the San José Symphony in the early 2000s, and is the first Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. For more info: pcmunoz.com.
Photo:
It meant a lot to me to perform a drum and dance duet with turf-dancer Dopeyfresh in 2016. Dopey was one of my 2nd grade students in the 90s.
