What is it about?
Exoskeletons dissect popular songs and re-imagine them through the collaborative generation of theatrical, socially relevant content.
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Why is it important?
In 2016, popular songs have been sold short. A great song has the potential to activate our imaginations, our bodies, and our minds. Songs can make strong political and social statements, transcend language and ability, even transport us through time. What is unique about the exoskeleton as a form is the integration of song with musical arrangement, choreography, dance, visual arts, installation, improvisation, original writing, and acting. Through the reconciliation of interdisciplinary explorations, engaged stakeholders can deepen their understandings of core educational content in subjects like English language arts, music theory, social studies, history, government, and politics, in measurable and concrete ways. In a broader sense, through exoskeletons, earworms have the potential to inform the realities of our constituents as they develop positive relationships with the work, meaning, it is entirely possible that popular music could actually come to nourish our critical and creative minds.
Perspectives
So, why generate content for popular music? Why perform these songs with a billion views from fresh perspectives? As teaching artists, we need to cultivate relevant earworms for young people. Earworms that are more than hooks and beats, earworms that transition from the auditory into the physical realm as both progressive and capable of social change. Earworms that juxtapose the personal with the systemic, encourage audiences and actors alike to think critically and actively engage citizens in reclaiming the right to tell our own stories.
Casey A Hayward
NYU Steinhardt
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Exoskeletons: Generating Content for Popular Music in 2016, Teaching Artist Journal, July 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/15411796.2016.1209072.
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