Greatest High School Band Ever

David Brown's retrospective piece (All Things Considered, 8/4/06) on the Kashmere High School soul band--dubbed the "greatest high school band ever"--reveals the value of audio files in delivering a wealth of information in compact form (in this case, 8:19 minutes).

Musings

1. Much of the piece here is a touching interview with the now 92-year-old master teacher, Conrad Johnson, someone who dared to break the mold—and that’s exactly what Johnson did with the Kashmere band, producing a full, commercial-sounding funk band when other high school bands were playing tired and timid semi-classical pops standards. Try reminiscing about a favorite teacher, especially an eccentric one like Conrad Johnson.
   
   
2. Besides the audio in the piece, the NPR site has links to three Kashmere classics: “Super Bad,” “Do You Dig It, Man,” and a soul-drenched version of the Paul Desmond ultra-cool jazz classic (with the Dave Brubeck Quartet), “Take Five.” The NPR is a near-limitless well of materials and here is a page devoted to the original “Take Five,” on the Dave Brubeck album, Time Out. One possibility here is to contrast of the two versions--between the broad cultural categories of cool and hot, about which even tone-deaf students might have something interesting to contribute.
   
   
3. A final writing topic might focus on the ongoing debate over the value of music and arts educations generally in the schools, K-12, the subject of the 1995 film, Mr. Holland's Opus. In general the role of arts education in public schools has lessened with the emphasis on testing. How do you feel about this change, about the role of arts in high schools specifically?