When Karl Paulnack addressed the parents of the incoming freshman class at Boston Conservatory in 2003, he shared some profound thoughts about the power and purpose of music: “Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds” (2). While this may be true of many of the arts in general, music does find a way into our souls with uncanny speed and accuracy—even if we don’t consider ourselves “musical.” At Rehoboth Christian School, we believe the reason for that connection is the image of God that we bear as people. His characteristics and qualities are woven into the fabric of what it means for us to be human, and just as God is the Creator, we too are creators—of poetry, art, architecture, dance, and music. Therefore, when we see the joy on the faces of performers or feel meaning stirring in our souls, it’s because in those very moments, we are living out exactly who we were made to be.
And that’s glorious.
Spend any amount of time on Dinétah (the Navajo Nation) or Halona: Idiwan’a (the Zuni Pueblo), and you’ll soon learn the power and ubiquitous presence of music in the lives of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest.
Spend any amount of time on Dinétah (the Navajo Nation) or Halona: Idiwan’a (the Zuni Pueblo), and you’ll soon learn the power and ubiquitous presence of music in the lives of the indigenous peoples of the American Southwest. These are the students that Rehoboth serves, so it makes sense for music to feature prominently in their educational experiences. Of course, that includes learning about half notes and eighth notes, about treble clefs and bass clefs, about musical dynamics and proper breathing techniques—but from an even larger perspective, it’s about teaching students what it means to be fully human in the way that Paulnack described.
Choir and Curriculum
Today’s educational best practices see many schools featuring student work in some public display or evening event that invites a wider audience to experience what children have learned, but for band and choir directors, this has been baked into their teaching all along. Young musicians perform multiple concerts each year for eager parents, grandparents, siblings, and the larger school community; in those times, the work of the teacher and students is on full display. When he first came to Rehoboth thirty years ago, Bob Ippel realized that those concerts contained opportunities for something more participatory and experiential for the audiences. “It just made so much sense to connect to the thematic units we were studying in the middle school,” says Ippel, who was teaching English at the time. “Whether it was our African-American history unit, New Mexico history, or our World War II unit, I wanted to bring music into the same mix as literature and social studies.”
There really wasn’t a vocal music program at that time, so Ippel’s efforts got students singing together in class. Over the next few years, that developed into more formal choir opportunities for both middle school and high school students, and Ippel teamed up with Gail DeYoung to lead the program for decades. Concerts became a normal experience for the Rehoboth community, and the school began to send students out on tours around the country to tell the Rehoboth story. From this perspective, choir concerts become an opportunity to share the gospel in captivating, relevant ways. “We were performing in the Calvin College chapel during a tour to West Michigan, and our concert was all about celebrating diverse cultures and the richness of God’s creation. Students were so excited to wear their traditional clothing and sing in the Navajo language, using traditional instruments,” Ippel recalls. “It was such a powerful and sensory way to reflect on the beauty of our differences instead of the barriers they can create.”
“It was such a powerful and sensory way to reflect on the beauty of our differences instead of the barriers they can create.”
A couple of more recent concerts also exemplify the spirit of storytelling. During a middle school history unit on slavery, Rehoboth students used the book, So Tall Within, by Gary D. Schmidt, which is a picture-driven biography of Sojourner Truth. The concert included spirituals and other songs that captured the way hope can still spring up from the bonds of oppression. Schmidt flew to Rehoboth for that week of school to interact with a variety of history and language arts classes, and he served as the narrator for the concert—reading the story between songs as the pictures from the book served as backdrops for each piece. Students also shared spoken word poems they had created out of inspiration from Schmidt’s work.
The high school choir’s Christmas concert of 2019 in the historic Sacred Heart Cathedral of Gallup, New Mexico was another powerful example of story-based performance. Titled, Dispel the Darkness of the Night, the concert featured three scripted movements with related songs: The Tragedies, The Light, and The Hope. Before each song, a short narration explained the circumstances that birthed the piece and connected its real-world message to the anticipation of Advent. During the opening movement, the concert took on the pain of alcoholism, suicide, and unresolved missing persons cases that impact an unfairly large percentage of Native Americans. “Sweetest Gift,” by John Schmidt of the Piano Guys and “Please Stay,” by Jake Runestad captured the difficulty of the Christmas season for people who have lost family members to tragic circumstances. During interludes within these songs, choir members read diary entries and personal reflections from teens and adults who have wrestled with depression and thoughts of suicide.
The audience was riveted.
“Even if someone hasn’t experienced identical circumstances, everyone has a memory triggered when they hear someone else’s story,” says Ippel. That’s one way music helps us share in our humanity, and it has become an integral part of the choir program at Rehoboth. We also use these events to share the broader story of Rehoboth and the specific cultures of Navajo and Zuni peoples. It’s not uncommon to see touring groups incorporating a loom or a cradle board into a concert as an object lesson developed out of its meaning in Native culture. Instruments like the native flute and drum bring immediacy and impact as they accompany singers as well.
Stories without Words: Bring on the Band
But storytelling isn’t limited to vocal music. Middle School and High School Band Director, Kevin Zwiers, believes it’s a powerful part of an instrumental concert too. As the son of a band director, Zwiers remembers listening to his father, Ron, take time to talk about each piece during a concert so that the audience would understand it better. “That could be about the form of the music, the composers who created it, or the context that brought it out,” remembers Zwiers. “It was always his hope to teach people something, even if they were only hearing the piece for the first time.”
“When you’re out on tour, you have to remember that people have a lot of commitments to their own children, schools, and churches. What’s going to make our concert stand out as worth attending?”
By the time Kevin and his wife, Anna, arrived at Rehoboth to teach music, tours and story-driven concerts were already underway. “When you’re out on tour, you have to remember that people have a lot of commitments to their own children, schools, and churches. What’s going to make our concert stand out as worth attending?” Zwiers says. “I think the story we weave through our work can help portray something special and also what’s unique about Rehoboth.” He sees major parallels between the Rehoboth students coming from such a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences to form a beautiful and cohesive body and the way individual instruments unite into sections and ultimately into one body of a band bent on glorifying God.
This is an abridged version of this article. To read more, subscribe to the print or digital edition of Christian Educators Journal.
Dan Meester is the Executive Director of Rehoboth Christian School in Gallup, New Mexico. His thirty years in Christian education have included teaching high school English and Bible, college counseling, and serving as an administrator in a variety of settings.
Work Cited
Paulnack, Karl. “Welcome Address Given to Freshman Parents at Boston Conservatory.” Boston College, August 28, 2003, https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/centers/boisi/pdf/s091/Welcome_address_to_freshman_at_Boston_Conservatory.pdf