Music Education, Democracy & the Skills We Build Through Music with Joe Elefante (Part 2) | 199

Welcome back to Crescendo Chat. This is Part 2 of my conversation with Joe Elefante.

In Part 1, Joe shared his journey as a professional musician, educator, and author. We explored why music education deserves to be valued for what it truly is — not simply as an activity, but as a powerful way to develop thoughtful, creative, and engaged human beings.

In this episode, we take a deeper look at the connection between music education and the skills needed in a thriving community.

Joe shares how the principles of jazz — including improvisation, listening, call-and-response, and collaboration — can transform the way we think about teaching and learning.

We discuss how music classrooms provide students with opportunities to take risks, make mistakes, respond to others, and work together toward something greater than themselves.

Joe also challenges us to think differently about how we advocate for music education. Instead of focusing only on what music can lead to, what if we celebrate music because it already has incredible value?

This conversation is a powerful reminder that every time students make music together, they are practicing skills that will serve them far beyond the classroom.

So, let’s jump back into my conversation with Joe Elefante.

Connect with Joe:

• Website: https://www.joeelefantemusic.com/
• Book – An Endless Knot

Where to find me: 

Crescendo Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crescendocommunity
Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrescendoMusicEd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crescendomusic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-o-shea-62a3741b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CrescendoDeb

Introduction  

G’day. I am Debbie O’Shea, and this is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast, episode number 199. We’re here because the research is clear: music changes brains, builds communities, and transforms childhoods. 

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land. 

Debbie O’Shea

Hi everyone! Thanks for tuning in again. This is part two of my discussion with Joe Elefante. I think our discussion about all things music education, listening to his inspiring journey, the community building, the importance of what we do, the essential value of music education. I think you’re going to love part two. If you haven’t listened to part one, go back and listen to the previous episode. And I don’t ask all the time, but I would really love it if you would rate and review this podcast, and share it with your friends. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy part two with Joe. Let’s talk about advocacy a little more without harping on, but a bit of harping on’s okay. All right. So you argue in your book that music and the arts aren’t enrichment, and like we know, those of us who work in it, we know they shouldn’t be just nice to have, and it’s about forming humans that we’ve already talked about. Can you sort of make that case for us through some of the things you talk about in your book?

Joe Elefante

Sure. So yes, I believe very strongly and have for a long time before I wrote this book that music is not the arts in general are not enrichment, neither in the case of education, or in our lives, and too often we see in our lives the arts as enrichment. So, when it comes to advocacy, a lot of advocates that I know of, and they’re totally well-meaning, and I don’t disparage anybody’s advocacy, and I’m not putting them down. But a lot of people talk about. Well, I think that you should, you know, we should. Music education is important because you know, look at all of the cognitive skills that that students get. Look at all the benefits they have on their standardised test scores. They get better grades in math. They get better grades in in language arts. They get better grades in science. They go to better colleges. These are all great, but to me, they miss the point because that when when we when our advocacy for music education and for arts education rests on how it supports the other more important quote unquote subjects, then what we’re doing is we’re relegating it to a second tier. I don’t think that we should be relegating arts education to a second tier. I think it has its own intrinsic value, that it is good in and of itself. And we’ve already discussed a few of these things, right? We’ve discussed how it helps forms citizens and gives them the capacities they need to participate in democracy. I mean, think about if more citizens had the experience of being in a choir and just being-I don’t want to say forced, but like regularly put. Given the the practice of listening so carefully to those around you, and and taking the own sound of your voice and subjugating that sound to the to the benefit of the larger whole. Think about if more people had the experience of being in a choir where making mistakes is not only okay, but it’s expected and it’s it’s tolerated and it’s and it’s not looked on as a weakness. It’s looked on as you know you made a mistake. Here we are all to like build you up, right? These, I mean, even if we don’t talk about democracy, just talk about being a human like with other humans. I mean, these are capacities that are so important. I mentioned theatre before. The whole idea of being able to step into the shoes of a of a character and and inhabit another character’s experiences and another character’s emotions and motivations. Yeah, I I just think that there’s so much in the arts that we do. That yes. You can you can train these capacities in other places as well. You know whether it’s athletics or you know civic organisations, things like that. But nowhere I don’t in my experience is nowhere is it as rich and as systematised as it is in the arts, especially the performing arts. So and then yeah, so that that there’s my case for for music advocacy.

Debbie O’Shea  

Just we’re going yes, yes, we agree. Yeah, and I love I love that that you picked up that you pointed out about making a mistake, and it’s and it’s I think that if there were more, I’d go. Okay, I could be going a little far here, right? But we have an anxious generation coming through, right? I know I’m overgeneralizing. You know, don’t yell at me if you’re driving in your car. Generalise away. But we are, and I think if there were more of these anxious little kids in the choir making the mistake, being supported, learning from your mistakes because you’re not going to learn anything unless you make mistakes. You’re not going to. You need to take the risks, make the mistakes, learn, listen to the others. I just, I think, I’m actually like you. I think a lot of our current ills would be lessened if we were all singing in choirs and being part, a greater part of the performing arts. And I think that’s something that education is missing, as they’re thinking. Oh, we have to fix this up. Okay, we’ll get rid of these. Let’s let’s do more standardised testing and more focus on literacy and numeracy, and let’s get rid of those frills. No, no, no, no, no. They’re not frills. But I just like to point out specifically the bit about making mistakes-it’s really important that children learn that they can do those. You know, with with there are still lawnmower parents around, so do you know about lawnmower parents?

Joe Elefante 

Of course, yeah.

Debbie O’Shea  

So helicopter parents hover and look after you, but lawnmower parents-they clear the way for you, so you have no obstacles. The poor children have not got a chance learning.

Joe Elefante

It’s becoming more and more prevalent in our society, and too, unfortunately.

Debbie O’Shea  

And and not that I’m saying you’re going to be treated meanly if you’re in a choir, but you are going to make mistakes, and you do have to learn from them, so yeah, you do.

Joe Elefante

You do learn from them, but you also learn as both the person making the mistake or as someone acquire mate of someone that has made a mistake. You learn how to address it in a healthy, productive, constructive way, as opposed to, you know, you mention literacy and numeracy, all great stuff, and I have, you know, I have nothing against any of the other subjects. Obviously, they’re so important, but they’re not. They’re not getting the skill. In fact, in a lot of ways, I mentioned and you mentioned individualism before. They’re actually learning more individualism in the other subjects in school, for the most part, they’re learning about how do how do I succeed on this test, my GPA, my class rank, my you know where I’m going to tertiary school or college or whatever you want to call it? It’s so much about individual achievement. It’s so much about personal gain. And again, important, great, but we we can’t call it frills now. Music education or physical education. These things that we do in school that are often put on the periphery. What you call frills-they’re not frills. They need to be in balance with these individual things, so that the students are getting both and being trained in both. 

Debbie O’Shea  

And yes, I agree. And and going back to to your argument about music being intrin of the arts generally being intrinsically valuable, we all know that. I mean, look, I will occasionally use if I’ve got a particularly bit of a roadblock with particular admin or groups. I certainly will not hesitate to bring up the correlations with learning discipline and the correlations with learning to read with the neural pathways and all of those things, but I think we need to keep as our core the fact that it’s it’s intrinsically. Valuable, and I think we need to remind ourselves of that. I actually want to come back to this listening, which is a bit of a core thread in your book, I believe, and a trainable skill, and something that’s not being taught doesn’t seem. I should. Oh, here I am, sweeping generalisations. Stop, Debbie. Oh, it just doesn’t seem to be as big a thing these days. Teaching, listening, and so can you tell us sort of what this means to you? So, if we’re talking to someone who’s sitting there with you know 25 seven year olds in front of them for half an hour, or whole string of groups of 20-five and 30-year-olds. How 20-five and or 30-seven-year-olds? I mean, not 20-five and 30-year-olds. Tell us that’s a different

Joe Elefante

challenge.

Debbie O’Shea  

It’s obvious. It is, and you know what? They talk more.

Joe Elefante  

They absolutely do. There’s no question. Yes, they’re they’re they’re more poorly behaved.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yeah, they are, and they’re harder to tell off.

Joe Elefante  

Yes, all true.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yeah. So, can you tell us a bit about this learnable, trainable skill? Why it matters, and what we can do in the classroom?

Music Education Is Not a Frill: Its Intrinsic Value

Joe Elefante

100% You know, it used to be. So we go back way before, you know, the United States or Australia or anything. Way before we talk about the ancient Greeks, right? They were training this because it was an oral culture, right? So people like Aristotle and that whole school in in ancient Greece and then in classical Rome, they were training listening and speaking as much as they were actually more than they were training writing and reading. They were training listening skills, and you know, over time, the written word became very, very important and became prime, and and that’s and that’s great. But we have neglected the skill. This well, we have neglected the skills of listening and speaking. But I focus more, obviously, in my book on listening because that is so core to music education. I identify a skill that I call generative listening, which is it’s multifaceted, but it’s the ability to understand what someone is saying to be able to articulate it back to them in your own words, which is great because that’s understanding. But then also to be able to inhabit what they’re saying, so like to understand it, to know it, to feel it, and then to see it, to see the person’s lived experience and what they’re saying, to really listen with empathy, because it’s one thing to just say, “Oh, well, I listen, but then there’s also like there’s that close listening, and when when you talk about, you know, what can I tell people in a choir? People that teach choir to seven year olds, well, we’re teaching them more than anything. Yeah, we’re teaching them to sing, and that’s great. And I’m not minimising that, but really, just as much, equally, co-equal with singing, we’re teaching them to listen really, really closely. No, Johnny, that’s you’re you know you’re you’re sticking out. You have listen to your choir mates, and you know make sure you blend your voice, and you give them skills to blend their voice, so they’re not just you know, you know just they blend and then leave them on their own. You give them the skills, but in order to use those skills, the very very first skill they need before they need tone production, breathing, vowel formation, diction, any of those things, pitch. Before they need any of that soul edge, the first thing that they need to be able to do is to listen, because they need to hear if their vowel doesn’t match the vowel of the person next to them, they need to be able to hear if their final S consonant is coming at a different time as the person next to them, or if their S consonant is last lasting longer than the person next to them. They need to hear if they’re out of tune with their neighbours. These are all things that they need to hear before they can use their all their tools and their toolbox that we’re giving them to like make their performance better. They have to be able to listen closely, and not only listen closely, but also listen closely while they are doing their thing. So you know, it’s yes, I’m I’m using my skills, but while I’m using my skills, I’m also listening to those people around me, so because because before I can before I can decide how to improve or or or make the most out of or maximise what it is I’m doing, I have to be able to hear myself in this whole, and I think that’s another part of it. Just the idea of you being part. Of a whole, and I’ve talked a couple now about subjugating your your your ego, and that’s a big part of listening too, and a big part of being in a choir. Like, there’s some students that, you know, if they’re singing a solo, they’ve got that power, and they, you know, they’ve they’ve got those bright vowels, and it really projects. But yes, save that for the talent show, you know, we’re gonna talk about how you can form your voice and form yourself physically and form your mindset too. To like, this isn’t the Johnny show.

Joe Elefante

This is the second grade choir show. You know what I mean? And here’s how we here’s how we take all your gifts. We’re not trying to minimise your gifts. We’re going to take your gifts, but we’re going to just subjugate part of them to the good of the entire group. And so these are, yeah, these are the things that that we learn in choir, in my opinion, in in my many years teaching.

Debbie O’Shea  

And also as a classroom teacher, it’s the sort of thing that that we do all the time. Whether whether it’s hearing one and two sounds on a beat and learning our first rhythmic elements, but we are also always performing as a group. I mean, just today I did something with drumsticks, you know, a bit of that, and I’m just going, let let’s, you know, why are you so loud? Now we’re a group. Let’s-it’s all of those things. I think it-it’s in absolutely everything we do, isn’t it? 

Joe Elefante  

I believe so. Yeah.

Debbie O’Shea  

I think so. And the other thing that I just wanted to have a little chat about before we get to your nuggets of fabulous is just talking about jazz. Jazz is a teaching philosophy because I’m thinking as a what? What could I guess? What’s fundamental about jazz that connects to all of these things that we’re talking about, like listening and responding in real time and that sort of thing, and also what could we borrow as primary, elementary music educators in the classroom? What could we borrow from the jazz tradition, even if we’re not jazz musicians ourselves?

Listening as a Trainable Skill

Joe Elefante  

So you you already stole my thunder a little bit because you talked about two of the main things, which are listening and responding in real time, and I think that that those are the two most important elements when it comes to jazz in sort of like a general classroom setting. But I’ll bring up one more, which is something that we have you know danced around, and in you know I don’t want to say in a negative way, but we’ve tried to minimise the idea of individualism, and jazz is very much an art form of individual expression. But it’s individual expression that serves a greater purpose. So it’s my turn to solo now. It’s my turn to improvise. I’m responding responding to what’s happening in real time, but I’m doing it in service of something. I’m I’m I’m finding the way it fits in the whole. So I think in terms of the classroom, the easiest thing and the simplest thing I can say to you is the whole concept of improvisation. Improvisation brings in all the stuff we’ve been talking about about you know subjugating our egos and listening on all that stuff. Another element that we can bring into music education is individual expression, and improvisation is a great way to do that. So you were talking before about using drums. What if students were allowed to make up their own rhythms? You could even do another jazz tactic. We’ll call it an element, a jazz concept of call and response, where one student improvises a rhythm and the other students, you know, echo the rimic, mimic the rhythm back to them. You could give them if you have orph instruments like mallet instruments. You could have them give them a set of notes with which to improvise, and you know there are all these great tracks that you can find on YouTube or on the internet somewhere where they’re listening to tracks and they’re playing little solos. If you give them like a set of notes to to play their solos, and I think it’s great to incorporate jazz early and often into the classroom, even into the primary classroom, because of that reason. Because I mean, first of all, it’s such an enriching and fulfilling and beautiful art form that I think gets underserved often. But also, it just it brings in that element of individual expression, which is so important and so crucial to the student’s development, but always in service of the whole, in service of the greater good. So, so yeah, any anything we can do to bring in the elements of improvisation into the classroom, what? Whether it’s with our students or, I mean, heck with ourselves. Why not, right? We we we should all be able to listen and respond in real time. I mean, if you think about it, what we do as music educators is is very jazz. It’s very much like you you mentioned it before. We’re listening to stuff that’s happening and like thinking in real time. How do I how do I respond to this. How do I? How do I make this better? How do I make music out of this? You know.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yes. Yes. Very good point. I think we are all jazz musicians in that respect.

Joe Elefante  

Absolutely.

Debbie O’Shea  

Now, nuggets of fabulous. Now, when we’re feeling a little down about the importance or lack of importance placed on our subject. Perhaps your nugget of fabulous might be about how to help us hold our ground, or maybe a nugget about listening, a nugget about how we could shift the language we speak. Whatever I shouldn’t put words in your mouth. What nuggets of fabulous do you have to offer?

Bringing Jazz, Improvisation, and Individual Expression Into the Classroom

Joe Elefante  

So, since we spent so much time talking about advocacy informing people, I guess my nuggets of fabulous would be those emails I mentioned before that my students, that my wife’s students sent to her in her final in her final weeks. Any time we get sort of discouraged or feel like we’re we get frustrated or feel like we’re butting up against impossible odds, I think we have to. Sometimes we don’t we don’t have to. It helps us to remember how we’re serving a bigger a bigger purpose, and those emails, the things that students said, you know, we we don’t think from day to day because we’re so caught up, we’re so busy, and we’re we’re so caught up in what has to get done in that moment that we don’t think about every interaction we have with our students is is forming them, and we have a choice whether to have that be a positive formation, an intentional positive formation, or an unintentional neutral or negative formation. But you know the the stuff that they were saying to her, I found my people in your classroom. You made me, you convinced me that I actually was a singer. I never thought I was a singer until I was in your classroom. I, you made me believe that I could do hard things, even things like you know watching you and Joe raise your child helped me you know figure out how I wanted to raise my own child, and like you know things like that. Just all these things that we take into our classrooms day to day, it gets mundane and kind of humdrum for us because we do it so often and we do it every day, and it comes so naturally to us. But to them, it can be so important and can be so formational. So my my nugget of fabulous is you know we’re always forming our students, and let’s let’s see that as a as a blessing and a privilege, and to do it in a way that is intentional and positive, and it’ll that that will reap many, many, many rewards.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yes, that’s very, very good reminder. And not that I necessarily want to have to mention the book that I wrote recently. No, but please do. But my that is the whole premise of my book, The Stallic Might Effect. That each little drop builds something glorious, and you want to be a drip of a glorious crystal gem, not something corrosive. And even like the gift of those emails is tangible proof that those lovely drips were uplifting and building, but I think we just have to believe that our positive interactions are building up. So I think that’s absolutely a wonderful nugget of fabulous. I’m glad it has been a complete joy speaking to you, Joe. Before we go, though, I you get a soapbox moment, and we need to tell everyone where to get your book. I will put it in the show notes. So if you want to find the show notes, if you go to crescendo.com.au, just go to Joe’s episode, and they’ll all be down there in the show notes. But if you want to tell people where they can grab it, sure.

Joe Elefante 

So it’s on all. It’s called, as you mentioned before, and endless knot. How how democracies form the. Citizens, they need. It’s on all the major platforms, Amazon and whatnot. And you can also find more about me and the book and some other writing projects of mi**@*******te.com That’s J e l e f a n t e.com And you could find out about my music career a little bit there too. You could, if you wanted to go down the the rabbit hole and look at some of the stuff that I’m doing in my in my jazz and composer world, you’ll you’ll see some of that as well. But yeah.

Debbie O’Shea  

Oh, that’s wonderful. We’ll put that link in the show notes too.

Joe Elefante

 Thank you.

Debbie O’Shea  

That is wonderful. It’s just been a delight to speak to you, Joe.

Joe Elefante 

It’s been my pleasure, and I appreciate the time. Like really, it’s I had a great time, and hopefully, I was able to offer some value to your to your listeners.

Debbie O’Shea  

Oh, I think absolutely, definitely. Do you have a soapbox moment? I like to finish with something that you’d like to say to all of the listeners right now.

The Lasting Impact We Have on Our Students

Joe Elefante 

I’ve said all my soapbox moments, so yeah. I mean, I talked about how music should not music education shouldn’t be seen as a fringe. I talked about how you know music education should not always be seen as supporting other subjects. How it has its own intrinsic value. I talked about how we form humans and citizens in the music classroom. Yeah, I mean, that’s that though. That’s my soapbox right there. The whole episode was a the whole thing. It’s it’s it’s it’s what we what we do is is is so important, and and that’ll help us as we get frustrated day to day, and it’ll also help us to advocate for our programmes and to advocate for our our disciplines because it is so important. And as you mentioned, often not not in every single case, there are some very supportive communities and very supportive administrators and very supportive policymakers out there, but there are also a growing number of people that are starting to forget the value that arts education brings to our to our students and to our communities and to our schools, and it’s important to remember these things: the intrinsic value of music education, music as a core subject, and music’s ability to form humans and citizens. These are important things to remember. And the emails, you know, the the nuggets of fabulous. It’s important to remember these things because it can be it can be frustrating and demoralising work at times when we’re constantly butting up against against obstacles. So keep the faith.

Debbie O’Shea  

I love it. Thanks again, Joe. Bye.

Joe Elefante

It’s my absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Sign-off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget that you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au forward slash number of this episode. Also, you can find the transcripts there, so you’ve got all of the detail that you need. If you’ve found this podcast useful, I’d really love it if you share the link with a colleague. Remember, all I can be is the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. We’ll meet again. I hope we will. Bye. 

Just for Laughs

As we know, laughter relieves stress. Don’t lose sight of the funny side of life. I was addicted to soap, but but I’m clean now.