Shaunel Watts and Professor Susan Kenney, Elementary Music Education

The southern most Indian state, Tamil Nadu, is home to over 40 colonies of leprosy affected people. To maintain livelihood, these “untouchables” generally resort to a life of begging. The situation has vastly improved in the past decade as charitable groups have helped accommodate the medical and physical needs of the people. Unfortunately, the colony children remain largely disadvantaged because of their social status and poor living conditions. In 2001, the non-profit organization, Rising Star Outreach (RSO), began a boarding school to help the children of the colonies.

The boarding school attends to the children’s physical and educational needs, however as the children are not living with their parents, they often lose connection to their past culture. When the children go home on school breaks, opportunities and education well beyond those of their parents can induce a natural ravine between generations. The children’s heritage and previous culture loses validity and importance. RSO has tried to combat this through a monthly reunion between parents and children, addressing their interpersonal relationship, but not the cultural relationship.

During June and July of 2007, I served as a volunteer for the boarding school. Before going on the trip, I decided to try and help this cultural gap by teaching a music class at the boarding school. Based on my experiences in the Elementary Music Education major, I decided to use songs specific to the children’s colonies to help validate their home culture in an educational setting. I intended to collect the colony songs from the student’s parents, the older students and the boarding school teachers and then use the songs to teach music. In the class, I also planned to use American songs to teach English and musical concepts, naturally building a bridge between the American and Indian cultures. After returning from India, I also planned to share the collected songs with American music educators.

My hypothesis was that there were folk songs specific to the leprosy colonies of India that could be used in an educational setting. This project had two aims based on my hypothesis: collecting songs and sharing songs. Despite concerns regarding the hesitancy of the colonists to share songs, I felt the project was definitely possible based on information I received from RSO.

In India, I was continually surprised at the excitement held by all three groups (parents, older students and teachers) for sharing songs. Early into the process, however, I realized I would need to become much more specific about what type of songs I was looking for. I had not anticipated the difficulty in finding short, non-religious songs, appropriate for children. The few colony songs I collected were very lengthy prayer songs that would not work in an education setting. The older students were a great resource, but often wanted to sing songs from the radio, or “Jesus songs” (translated Christian missionary songs). One month into the process, I realized the boarding school teachers were the best resource for useful songs. The teachers did not come from the leprosy colonies, but they understood the children, and were full of Tamil children’s folk songs that could be used both in American and Indian educational settings.

I never proved my hypothesis as I did not find any songs that were specific to the leprosy colonies of Tamil Nadu. However, I did record over 25 Tamil songs, and found 11 of those to be conducive to an elementary musical education setting (either in the U.S. or India).

Sharing songs proved to be the best part of the trip. During June, I worked with 25 new students at a temporary building, as we waited for a new, larger one to be completed. The students had very little structure during the day, and about twice a week I, along with 7 other volunteers would break the students into 3 groups for “center time.” The music “center” was magical. With the help of another volunteer, we lead three different groups of students in a series of American folk songs and watched as the language barriers that created so many discipline problems diminish significantly for 25 min.

During July, we moved to the new building with all 100 of the students. Because it was a new school, there were infinite daily problems that required a great deal of patience for everyone involved in the transition. These problems resulted in my music class becoming a low priority. Fortunately, I was able to use music on a more informal level during the children’s free time and the time I spent tutoring one on one. By this point in the trip I had memorized a few of the collected Tamil songs, and I would often sit down with a few of the children to jointly sing the songs. It was always a thrill to see the children’s eyes light up when they realized I was singing a song in their native tongue. It became somewhat of a novelty as they would then share other songs with me (many of which I already had collected). I was also delighted to find many of the students I worked with in the other building remembered the American songs we had sung together. I am fairly certain comprehension was nonexistence, but the experience stuck with many of them and will greatly aid them as their English improves over the coming years.

The next step in this project is sharing my findings with American elementary music classrooms. I have notated many of the collected songs, and plan to use them in my future classrooms. Additionally, I plan to write an article sharing a few of my experiences and collected songs from India to submit to local music education journals. Within the article I would like to include lesson plan ideas that discuss some of the cultural differences between the U.S. and India.

Overall, despite the chaotic nature of the trip, I feel it was a complete success, well worth the time and money. I plan to continue my folk song research throughout my life and career, and hope to collect many other songs to help enhance the world cultures introduced in my classroom. I do not plan to return to Tamil Nadu, however a very interesting research project could focus on how music and art has helped persons affected with leprosy, deal with their disease.