American Music

At IPCNA, where I was working, each class session lasts one month. Last month, I finished covering all the material I had been given one day early, so I needed to find something to do for the last day. I was initially going to show a movie, but then I had a better idea. The students always want to listen to music in class, but the music they want to listen to sometimes lacks in variety. The American music that is popular in Peru is all pretty much all from the 80s. I do thoroughly enjoy listening to Aha and the Titanic theme song, but I feel that there is more out there, so I came up with a plan. I would spend the class playing different songs and going over the lyrics with the students. This would both teach them English and familiarize them with new music that wasn’t “We are the World” by Michael Jackson. I spent an entire day choosing songs that had both cultural significance and coherent lyrics, and by the class time I was really excited about my idea. When I started playing the songs and trying to get the students to discuss them, however, it became apparent that they did not share my enthusiasm. They kept complaining more and more and paying less and less attention so eventually I just gave up and played the Thriller video for them. This made them completely happy even though we had watched “Thriller” the last two days in a row.

I’m not quite sure why this happened. It’s possible that they just have no desire to experience anything new, which would be very sad. It is also possible that since the music I was playing was not accompanied video it was not stimulating enough to hold their attention, which is probably more likely and at least equally discouraging, because some of them are college students. It’s also possible that the lyrics were too difficult for them to understand, but not very likely because they don’t understand the lyrics to songs that they do like either. Or maybe it's just that “How Deep is Your Love” is the high point of all musical history.