The GRAMMYs and the Super Bowl halftime show
how two televised music events help me reflect on my music teacher worldview
The first two Sundays of February 2025 proved to showcase two different but highly pivotal aspects of music and pop culture history in the United States this year.
Let me first say that this year’s televised GRAMMYs performance was probably one of the most exciting GRAMMYs I’ve seen yet. Each performance felt infectious, and I felt proud seeing the amount of women topping it out at the awards.
From Doechii’s fiery medley to Sabrina Carpenter’s old Hollywood-inspired number to Cynthia Erivo’s beautiful tribute to Quincy Jones with “Fly Me to the Moon”… I felt the deep heart and soul of many of the performances.
Some of my favorite quotes of the evening were:
There is some Black girl out there watching me right now. You can do it, anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you.
— Doechii
I teared up watching her receive her GRAMMY for Best Rap Album, seeing how she is only the third woman ever to win the award.
"I think sometimes genre is a code word to keep us in our place as artists. And I just want to encourage people to do what they're passionate about, and to stay persistent".
— Beyoncé
The arguments over Cowboy Carter being country or not…sigh. Sometimes, I just want to ask people, “What biases are you bringing in to your understanding of what a musical genre is?”
The GRAMMYs was more than a celebration of music industry’s best. It felt like a celebration of what music needs to be. It needs to be more than mindless background noise and catchy hooks.
While I read articles and posts of the vibrant energy and joy that emerged from this year’s GRAMMYs, I felt less discourse from the very people who play a critical role in the foundation of a GRAMMY-winning artist — music teachers.
Maybe my social media feeds are whacky and not pushing out more music teacher discussion to me, but where are the people reflecting on how Doechii auditioned for high school choir with no prior music training? “My mentors saw a seed and watered it”, she says.
Every student in our music classrooms has some sort of a seed, obvious or not. What instructional choices and moments of relationship building are the water those students need?
And there’s the story of how Beyonce’s childhood dance teacher heard her sing and immediately told her parents? How often are we reminding children and their families of their brilliance more than just reminding them to improve on their art?
Then the following week was Kendrick Lamar’s 13-minute work of art on a football stadium. I cannot tell you how many articles, blog posts, videos, and Instagram carousel slides I have read that broke down choreography, costumes, storytelling and symbolism. Kendrick’s performance was not meant to give the everyday American viewer a surface-level visual and aural break from the football game.
Kendrick is not that type of artist. Even Kendrick’s former middle school English teacher said his passion was already there from an early start. Amidst all the administrative tasks us teachers we do, how often are we taking the time to detect artistic genius, even in some of the most quiet students?
After watching the halftime performance a few times, I just knew Kendrick and his design team had to stay true to their VALUES of sharing deeper messages with the art of hip hop. And to take advantage of a highly televised program like the Super Bowl to make your voice be heard? This was art to show history, culture, and community.
Yet…the amount of opinions from music educators defending their dismissal of Kendrick’s Super Bowl performance without research and understanding of its historical symbolism and significance is unfortunately, what I feel, an interesting temperature reading of how some of our current music teachers feel about the purpose of music education and its purpose for our diverse student population.
I have been reflecting on both GRAMMYs and the Super Bowl halftime performance especially after reading this post by Manny Faces.
Mainstream social media is quick to make memes, create breakdown videos…and here we music teachers are, trying to be “culturally relevant” by asking other people to draft up a lesson plan and editable Google Slides for us to use the next day. Then we move on to what is in our supposed regularly scheduled programming. (And please do not get me started on teachers’ assumptions that their students watch any of these at home.)
What these two kinds of televised musical events have taught me was how important it is for us to always strive for two things when empowering youth in the music classroom:
#1: Understand your individual and collective power through storytelling in music-making
#2: Utilize music as a purpose-driven art
Some questions to think about…
Are we music teachers supposed to help facilitate the next generation of artists to move forward with this kind of collaborative art?
Or are we music teachers who just want kids to be literate in Western classical notation and to know how to entertain the masses and their own personal fulfillment of music-making?
Are we teaching because we personally had “feel-good moments” when we were in a musical ensemble in our youth?
Or are we teaching because we perceive the kind of mightiness one has with a mic, a bunch of words, a beat, and a community?
Can it be all of the reasons above? Sure.
If some of today’s music teachers feel that this year’s GRAMMYs and Super Bowl halftime performances are of little relevance to their current teaching life, then I challenge them to think that it is beyond having an opinion on dislikes vs. likes in music tastes.
For me, it just comes down to these things:
teaching children how to entertain the masses
vs.
training children to be empowered with giving a message
Some things to share…
🎓 I got accepted into a doctorate program in music education! I will be starting classes this summer where I will have much more time and energy to ease myself into being a student again.
💰 I am currently in the early phase of launching a scholarship for diverse voices in music education. I think of how high school senior me would have loved to see this kind of scholarship exist. More details to share later as I work on the details.
🎶 It is that season of the school year where I am recruiting singers for next school year, polishing music for choir festivals, collaborating with guest artists, and dodging germs…because everyone around me is getting sick. 😷