ABSTRACT
After more than 40 years of teaching music theory to primarily African American young men at Morehouse College, I realize it is apparent that there is the need to devise more contemporary methods of delivering instruction, capturing attention, and maximizing productivity among music theory fundamentals students. An important first step is to shift from models of long-dead western European composers and to rethink the pedagogical paradigm of music in higher education to include more works by Black musicians as resources for analysis. Part One in this chapter describes some of the best practices gleaned as a veteran teacher. The teacher can glean a better sense of student demographics by conducting a survey that poses specific questions aimed at understanding more about the student’s cultural background and previous experiences with music and other arts disciplines. Part Two provides some specific musical examples and the ways in which music by Black composers and arrangers can be used for analysis in the classroom. Music becomes more facile and enjoyable by establishing correlations between theory and practice.
