 Historically, in the last few centuries of the university at least, the emphasis in a lot of programs has been on western classical music. Even now, in our own university, when students audition here, we'll say we'd like to hear two songs, and one should be in a language other than English, ideally Italian, German, or French. And we ask them to learn those, how to pronounce them at least, and to study them while they're here, because we know that when they go to graduate school, they'll be auditioning in Italian, German, and French. And lots of wonderful poetry in those languages, and you know, many themes and stories are universal, so when we're looking at these great works of literature in these languages, I think they find a lot of things to relate to in their own lives. But there's been an unfortunate neglect of music of everybody else in the country. And we certainly do have a bunch of classes, like the survey of non-western cultures, you know, we've got pop and rock and country music now, and hip-hop in the music department, and it's a wonderful thing to see. Because all those stories need to be told too, you know, how the waves of immigration, slavery, whatever, has affected the musical makeup of this country. You know, music is such a powerful tool. It is part of every political ad, it's part of every time somebody wants to move somebody, a movie soundtrack, you know what the characters are thinking because of the way the score is. And we also know the identity of, you know, the people in it, what kind of music they listen to sort of defines them. There's all this non-verbal stuff wrapped up in music, so it's very powerful and all of these groups need to be studied. But for a long time, there was this idea that the classical music was better because it was associated with a certain population that tended to have more money and maybe more of a certain kind of education. And it's been, it's a challenge to sort of stamp that out. Instead of saying, classical technique is healthy technique, and if you use your voice this way, you'll be able to sing for a long time, and it's, you know, really the best way to do it. Whereas if you sing all of this pop stuff, you're going to get tired and your voice will get sore and you're singing too heavy and too thick. We don't do that. We say, you know, here's the way to sing healthy classically, and isn't this virtuosic? And, you know, it's a specific kind of things. Whereas in contemporary commercial music, it's not lesser, it's just a different kind of virtuosity. This genre is more about the words and about the character of what you're saying, and it's a different way of using the voice. So we really talk about how those two things are the apples and oranges, but not one better than the other. And that's something I'm proud of. So my students right now are doing practice teaching, and one of them asked about a student she has that identifies as gender neutral. And historically with opera, you know, either you're a soprano or an alto or a tenor or a bass with a number of different definitions within those categories. And depending on what your particular voice sounds like, that will determine which roles you sing. So for example, with my high light voice, I'm always the angel or the fairy. Never the, you know, the witch, although I would like to be. But it's quite stereotyped, I guess. I mean, the word fach, it has to do with pigeonholing, and that's the name for the categorizations in opera. And so then here you have somebody that's identifying as gender neutral, and you know, how do you work with this person? Or a transgender voice, right? So someone who's maybe been their whole life speaking in one particular range, but now they feel more like themselves when they're speaking either much higher or much lower. You know, and about how you could design exercises using singing to help them through that transition, you know, with whatever hormones that are needed along with the surgery. I mean, we talk about those things in class, and that's important to me. One of the big questions is where musical communication comes from. There's this idea, as I said before, about the power of music, even without words, to move people. So there are specific scales or specific chords. I mean, a very simple example would be that a major chord, it gives us sort of a more of a happy quality and a minor chord we think of as a more somber idea. But that is something that, it's a good question, isn't it? Is that something that is just true, or is that something that's learned? Because there are various other cultures where dissonance is really valued. We know that the major chord is found in the overtones of any given note, and it's thought that perhaps that's why that sounds consonant to the ears, but we ask questions like that. And so when we go back to looking at very early music where they're using more scales than just major or minor, or for example, looking at Indian music where there are hundreds, you know, and sort of broadening students' ideas about what you can communicate with a scale. And in the medieval times, you know, when people would serenade each other, the scale that they chose had a lot to do with how they were feeling, you know? And sort of looking at songs, how they're arranged around this theory and what you might get out of it sort of explains how people understand what the music's trying to tell them. And we just sort of survey hundreds of years of music while always asking these questions, you know, what does it mean to be a virtuoso and who should do it? We ask questions about that, you know, why would anybody keep going when this is so frustrating and nothing is fun until you're good at it, right? And we look at that a lot and using the different styles of music to answer big questions about that, you know, is being a performer something that is only for some people or could anybody do it if they just work hard enough? And also, you know, is it possible to produce art according to rules? Because if you follow the harmony of forever ago, whatever sounds, you know, is that art or is that just following a formula? And, you know, there's a really interesting discussion questions. And it's very interesting for me to see what students bring, you know, to the table based on the music they grew up with and what they want to do in the future.