Scenario: A Music student's vision of community service learning at the beginning of the year
Marnus Nieuwoudt
Third-year BMus student
“As a high school art student I do not see it as a good deed to implement Western music in the predominantly African underprivileged community, for the simple reason that it took Western cultures millennia to reach this point of cultural refinement, of which the arts are central. It is a known fact that Africa is a completely different society with other refinements and conformations. Black South Africans are a completely different community than, for example, white South Africans. The two cultures differ vastly in terms of social refinement. It requires a person with a predominantly Western upbringing to have a higher quality of education to even consider taking music lessons at a young age and is therefore obviously a product of the parents’ quality of education. So how can an art form which requires an even higher form of education from privileged communities, be expected to be taught successfully to communities where the quality of the basic education is poor? And more importantly: Why? A few steps are being skipped in the process of refinement.”
Community Service Learning at the Odeion School of Music
The same student was asked to write an article at the end of the year following his involvement in community service learning. These are his comments:
The arts are known to push boundaries, music being no exception. Western classical music in South Africa has long been perceived as an elite and, at times, classist art form. The Mangaung String Programme is proof that this perception is no longer current. This is evident when a 9-year-old learner from this programme, who grew up in a rural area, answers the question of why she does music by saying: “I love it and I want the music I’m making to be perfect.”
Peter Guy started the Mangaung String Programme in 1998 in partnership with the University of the Free State and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture. Peter’s goal was to offer music tuition to young people from previously disadvantaged communities and to create opportunities that these youngsters wouldn’t normally have.
Community service learning forms part of the final year of the BMus (Music) degree at the UFS and music students partake in this programme to put their musical knowledge and experience into practice by teaching music theory to the learners at the Mangaung String Programme. The philosophy behind community service learning is for the programme to be mutually beneficial to all the parties involved. In this case, the previously disadvantaged community’s youth have new opportunities available to them and the music students have an environment where they can gain experience that will give them an advantage if they decide to follow a career in music education.
The first semester of the programme at the UFS is academically orientated and focuses on the theoretical and philosophical aspects of music education. The students then apply these theories in practice in the second semester when they start teaching at the Mangaung String Programme.
Classical musicians are naturally cynical and at times self-centred, because they’re constantly criticised and under extreme pressure to perform at the highest possible level. For Mr Werner Stander, lecturer in music education at the Odeion School of Music, it was no easy task to change a group of musicians’ dismissive attitude towards the programme. Not only did he succeed in giving them thorough and insightful training in the field of education, but he also made the whole experience enjoyable and personally enriching for the students. While the learners from the programme receive new opportunities in life, the music students also have a sense that they are making a difference and contributing to the future of this country.