Warner Launches Songmasters Project

The use of music as an educational tool is the latest goal of Songmasters, the organization founded by Warner Music International product development VP Jennifer Cohen to aid charitable and educational efforts through the cultural legacy of popular songs.

Previously, Songmasters benefited LifeBeat, Share Our Strength, and the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation with its American Express-sponsored "Songmasters Inside-Out" concert series, starring legendary songwriters and performers. Songmasters also produced the women's all-star gospel group Sisters of Glory, which embodied the entertainment/educational concept that is now manifest in "The American Road."

"The idea is to use historically significant songs recorded by contemporary artists to launch lesson plans in a host of subjects," says Cohen of the cross-curricular instructional and media program, which is targeted at upper elementary and high-school students as a supplementary educational tool.

"For instance, if an urban artist does a rap version of a Woody Guthrie tune—and there are a lot of reasons why that's appropriate—it's not just a 10th grade history lesson about the dust bowl," Cohen notes. "A modern version talks about issues like economic injustice, famine relief, and forced migration and can get kids involved in volunteering in soup kitchens and learning what they need to do to become environmental leaders."

Songmasters has allied with music industry executives and artists, as well as experts in education, civil society, and politics in its aim of reaching more than 30 million students and their families. Funded through a Ford Foundation grant and in association with Turner Broadcasting System's Turner Learning educational division, "The American Road" includes such luminaries as Marilyn Bergman, David Crosby, Ahmet Ertegun, Geraldine Ferraro, Quincy Jones, Madonna, and Frances Preston among its advisory board members.

Partner agencies include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League, the Earth Train youth organization alliance, the National Indian Education Assn., and the Points of Light Foundation community service organization.

"Education doesn't exist in a vacuum," says Cohen. "We're bridging the world of private foundation funding and corporate sponsorship and using the power of the media to heighten the impact that these charity-supporting organizations can have."

Songmasters now seeks to identify and record 64 music tracks for use in its initial outreach, which will consist of CD-ROMs featuring the music along with educator guides and supplementary materials. Cohen, who last week brought together the advisory board, program partners, youth leaders, and notable guests at a national symposium in New York to discuss and detail plans for "The American Road," looks to create a "new paradigm" by using "the unique power of music to reflect and catalyze change," as well as serve its educational/documentary purpose.

Additionally, Cohen says that the program hopes to emerge out of the classroom into family living rooms and communities through concerts and broadcasts and through "market promotions that basically all have the theme that the courage to create a better world starts with the voice of one individual."

The project, says Points of Light president/CEO Robert Goodwin, has the potential "to reach people where they are and motivate them in a way that's consistent with what turns them on."

Earth Train CEO Nathan Gray hails "The American Road's" ability "to communicate and reach people who aren't otherwise interested in social problems and messages through the most common and pervasive and powerful medium they know."

Brian Murphy, president of entertainment and sports media company Evolution, which will produce programming for "The American Road," says that music can make "a critical difference in engaging kids in the learning process."

Much of education today is "divorced from the reality of day-to-day experience," says Murphy, who cites the educational impact of the 1977 TV series "Roots." "Using artists of today brings [education] in line with real-world experience."