Year 9: Week 14 - "Tala al Badru Alayna"

An idea: include music from Muslim culture in our Winter Jk-5 Presentation.

This was not a new idea, but one that we had not figured out how to do, until this year. We strive to make our Winter Program be inclusive of different cultures and traditions to provide mirrors for students to see themselves in our curriculum and windows for students to learn about others’ traditions. With seven grades, there was limits to what we can include, and while it was important to be mindful it have a variety of music, it was never including culture. That’s just no going to happen. Add in the priority of students performing appropriate music skill-wise and it can be hard to be Inclusive of some cultures, but that’s not an excuse.

I’ve always been interested in including music from Muslim culture in this presentation. Americans who identify as Muslim continue to face oppression and prejudice. In addition, non-Muslim Americans’ ignorance of Muslims’ role in the modern world and the history of this culture are important reasons for us to do the essential work of bringing knowledge of Islam to all.

Cultural authenticity is essential and it is better to not include a culture in a presentation than to do it without respect. I’ve asked around and researched Muslim music, but never found anything that would work, until two weeks ago. The other general music teacher had asked one of our 3rd grade teachers who is Muslim about song ideas, and she forwarded me her response.

In the email was a link to Yusuf Islam’s version of "Tala al Badru Alayna."



The melody is wonderful, and musically appropriate for my 3rd graders. When I talked about it the 3rd grade teacher she told me the story of the song in which children sing to welcome the Prophet Muhammad. It’s a beautiful story and my brain already was figuring out to teach this song. The problem was I didn’t feel comfortable teaching this story, and I had already started teaching my 3rd graders “Ma’oz Tzur,” a Hebrew song.

The 3rd grade teacher agreed to help me teach the cultural information of the song, so it was up to me to figure out the music part. Two weeks to teach a song to perform in three different languages, Arabic, English and Hebrew? Connect themes between a Jewish song and a Muslim song?

I could have chosen to wait until next year, but this work was so needed for all of us that I decided to push myself to teach material with little prep, and to push my students to learn music faster with the same amount of care so that we could bring "Tala al Badru Alayna” to our community.

In the past week I’ve had a lot of new experiences teaching this song. I’ve taught about how Muslim live all over the world and that there is no language that is called, “Muslim.” I’ve talked about some of the incredible Muslims in our America culture and beyond, and I’ve taught my students how to sing in Arabic.

I told my students that learning this song would make them feel uncomfortable because most of them would not understand this song because of the Arabic and the style of the music. This is a feeling that would go away, but it was important they remember this feeling. These are feelings that others who come to America who aren’t familiar with our culture and language feel and we need to remember this, so we can help these people feel more comfortable and welcome.

I'm feeling pressure to get these songs prepared in time, and a responsibility to teach this song well, but that's okay.  I can handle it for my students.  Understanding Islam through music is a lesson that is too important to not teach.  And I can't wait any longer because my students are too important to not learn this song and Muslim culture.