Program

12:30

WorkFam Business Meeting

YouYoung Kang and Alfred Cramer, WorkFam co-chairs

Panel and Discussion

Music in Children’s Multimedia

12:45

Introduction

Ben Baker, Eastman School of Music and Derek Myler, East Carolina University, organizers

 

12:50

Learning to Listen: Stylistic Literacy in “Edutainment” Games

Pamela Mason-Nguyen, UC Santa Barbara

 

1:00

“Freeze Dance!” Ludomusical Video and Implied Participation

William O’Hara, Gettysburg College

 

1:10

It’s a Swinging Day in the Neighborhood: The Divergent Practices of Jazz Scoring in the Children’s Television Show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

James Heazlewood-Dale, Brandeis University

 

1:20

Children’s Music in Music Theory I: Rationale, Skills, and Methods

David Geary, Wake Forest University

 

1:30-2:00

Discussion

WorkFam Abstracts, Music in Children’s Multimedia

Learning to Listen: Stylistic Literacy in “Edutainment” Games

Pamela Mason-Nguyen, UC Santa Barbara 

The digitization of play has yielded video games for education and entertainment—or “edutainment.” My analysis focuses on games marketed towards 4-6-year-old players, an age which overlaps with when children are learning their culture’s musical conventions—or developing musical “literacy” (Hargreaves & Galton 1992/2017). In video game music, van Elferen (2016) describes how “literacy” relies on players’ exposure to multimedia music to interpret musical and sound-effect signifiers. Music stylistic literacy, then, grows through the process of experiencing how media objects represent those styles.

In this paper, I argue that music in North American edutainment games familiarizes children with the musical styles and their topical associations they encounter across the Western media landscape. My presentation centers on Putt-Putt Travels Through Time, Backyard Baseball, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, all from 1996. These three games reinforce musical parameters of blues, “world” musics, and Western art music and connect the styles to particular time periods, places, and communities. This work demonstrates that analyses of edutainment games can deepen our understanding of children’s media while inviting us to examine the musical and extra-musical associations we have learned to listen for.

“Freeze Dance!” Ludomusical Video and Implied Participation

William O’Hara, Gettysburg College

This presentation develops the idea of “ludomusical video,” and examines how some YouTube videos for children create the conditions for musical participation and semi-interactive participation. Ludomusical videos are a fixed form of non-interactive media that nonetheless interpolates an implied participant or “player” by suggesting various forms of interaction. The category reaches backwards through the history of media (home exercise videos, karaoke and “Music Minus One,” etc.) but has proliferated in recent years thanks to the democratization of production technologies, and the broad reach and monetization opportunities presented by social video platforms.

Ludomusical videos often draw on existing models of media, whether aerobics videos, music and videos, or especially “rhythm games” such as Guitar Hero, Just Dance, or Beat Saber, asking children to move, dance, sing, or otherwise participate. While they are not themselves interactive, these videos invite participation by asking children to “play” a game by reacting to the music and images on the screen. In this talk, I will show how ludomusical videos translate audiovisual cues from existing forms or music and games to create interactive entertainment in a fundamentally fixed medium. Finally, I will briefly discuss the increasing prominence of such videos in contemporary elementary music education.

 

It’s a Swinging Day in the Neighborhood: The Divergent Practices of Jazz Scoring in the Children’s Television Show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

James Heazlewood-Dale, Brandeis University 

Within the context of screen media, the sounds of a swinging rhythm section and a blues-inflected saxophone solo are commonly associated with narrative themes of criminality, urbanity, and sexuality. Scholarship on jazz in audiovisual media has largely focused on the music’s entanglement with 1950s films that explore such themes, notably The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), I Want to Live! (1958), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). However, research tracing the history of jazz across screen media has overlooked the work of composers who, in the decades immediately following the 1950s, subverted these associations by using jazz in children’s media. This paper focuses on the collaborations between Fred Rogers and jazz pianist Jonny Costa in the television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001), offering a new perspective on jazz’s function in screen media. This project builds on scholarship on jazz in screen media (Gabbard 1996; Butler 2002; Carlson 2022) and music in children’s media (Maloy 2019; Barrett and Welch 2024; Young 2023). Hollywood composers may have used jazz in films about drug addiction, murder, and armed bank robbery, but it is also music that American families would come to associate with a man who helped prevent a ten-million-dollar budget cut to PBS by reciting one of his songs as testimony in Congress.

 

Children’s Music in Music Theory I: Rationale, Skills, and Methods

David Geary, Wake Forest University

Music for children—including songs for TV shows, nursery-rhyme recordings on social media, and educational YouTube channels—can be musically sophisticated and captivating, making it a valuable repertoire to study in the undergraduate music theory curriculum for its intrinsic value, professional potential, and efficacy in preparing students for more advanced music-theoretical study. Three years ago, I created a two-week module for my Music Theory I class that develops written, aural, and keyboard skills related to this repertoire, and this lightning talk will describe the rationale behind its inclusion, the concepts and skills developed, and some of the specific activities and assignments implemented.