Mix Tape: Playlists as Pedagogy, Playlists as Portals
A love letter to the art of the playlist and an invitation to contribute to one
Dear beloved readers,
I love a good mix.
Playlists are my love language.
Playlists are essential to how I prep for class.
They are essential to my pedagogy, essential to my life.
I am a child of the 80s and 90s. They weren’t playlists when we were kids. They were mix tapes, recorded on cassette players with great care. They took time and effort. Sometimes you’d wait for your favorite song to play on the radio and try to catch it by hitting record. Liner notes added another dimension to the listening experience. Later, for a brief moment, there were mix CDs, but I had mix tapes from boyfriends into the mid-2000s. My last Walkman died circa 2007, and with it the ability to play the tapes, now gone like the loves they were made from. These days, I mostly make playlists on YouTube, which easily come together with a few clicks rather than the labor-of-love process of a mix tape.
Playlists are love letters - romantic love or friend-love, a greatest gift, a love language in and of themselves. Some of the best ones I ever received, I listened to so many times that I can still remember the order of the songs. When a song comes on from one of them, I expect the next, much like a good movie soundtrack (like Pulp Fiction, Dazed and Confused, Goodfellas - and of course, Dirty Dancing, the best movie soundtrack ever).
Playlists are pedagogy, an expression of my love of learning, a love letter to the education and faciliation process. Playlists are one of my favorite pedagogical tools, tools of life. They are a form of transrational pedagogy that are essential for transformative education that reach beyond the linear, rational, intellectual, beyond just our mind and towards our bodies and hearts. For classes, I make playlists on different themes. I have a master class playlist that is completely unruly with 182 songs (and running). The vibes are all over the place, but I love it. When in doubt, when I don’t know what to play, I turn to the class playlist. If I’m feeling really wild, I put it on shuffle - you never know what you’re going to get. I have made lots of thematic playlists, such as the following:
I’ve made playlists for life cycles - birth, hospicing, death, grief - put together, a playlist of regeneration. I’ve made playlists for special occasions: for International Women’s Day, my dissertation defense and research interviews, my long-lost love, California, the solstice. For most major life events, there is an accompanying soundtrack in my YouTube archives. If I don’t already have a playlist that meets the moment, it inspires me to create one.
What is the soundtrack of your life right now?
Each playlist is a portal, a time capsule. As I was writing this post, scrolling through my playlist archives on YouTube, I had forgotten about some of these lists and they immediately took me back to those times. What was I listening to to center myself as I prepared for dissertation research conversations? What did we sing to mom in hospice? What do these songs say about those moments? The music returns us not just to the memory, but the embodied feeling of those moments.
I especially love creating collaborative playlists. Many of the class playlists listed above are collaborative, and I invite students to add songs to them. A few years ago, in 2021, when I was taking part in Bayo Akomolafe’s course-ceremony We Will Dance With Mountains: Vunja!, I was part of a grieving group that created a collective playlist on death and grief that was so powerful, both in process and in output. It is entitled Death Is Safe, named after a resonant theme that came up in the course, a time capsule of that profound collective learning experience and community.
Playlist creation becomes a pedagogical practice: we begin class with a song of the day, and students can add and share about the song and its relationship to our learning. Sometimes it is just contributing a vibe, a feeling. Sometimes it contributes content, lyrics connected to the theme. But it is always connects, and it is always a teacher.
If you are an educator, facilitator, or spaceholder, how do you incorporate playlists and music in your pedagogical practice? I primarily use in song-of-the-day practice described above, although another fun approach, especially nice for a closing session and celebration of learning, is to devote a whole or half-session to a listening party, and have each student choose a song and share why they are choosing it. You can learn so much about people through their music. It is a profound tool for building and weaving community. I plan to create one in the upcoming Young Leaders for Peace program at UPEACE, and can’t wait to see what the youth share, knowing their musical taste is probably far different from my own (although since the 80s and 90s are oldies now, maybe not ;)
Enchantable community collaborative playlist
Let’s try an experiment: here is a link for an Enchantable community playlist! I invite you to add a song to it. You don’t need to explain why, but you are welcome to drop me a line if you want. Some prompts for inspiration this playlist:
What is the sountrack of your life right now?
What is a song you are currently turning to for inspiration, comfort, etc.?
What is your favorite song of the moment?
What is a song that connects you to your enchantment with the world?
Add your song here! (If you have trouble adding it, feel free to send it to me directly, and I will add it for you! You are also welcome to add more than one). Let’s see what we come up with together! I can’t wait :)
The songs on heavy rotation in our house - the Venn diagram silver where my musical taste and Daphne’s overlap - are all Chappell Roan, so I am starting the playlist with:
Finally, dear readers, here are some ways to join me online over the coming weeks - I hope to see you in some of these spaces!
June 12 - Critical Conversations in Peace Education: Building Community and Solidarity
June 20 - Solstice ritual and celebration for my Enchantable readers!
July 2 - Collective Storytelling as Worldbuilding with Mazorca Facilitation
July 30 - Cultivating Spaciousness in the Cracks workshop with Mazorca Facilitation
With loving care everywhere,
Stephanie
mmmmm. love this post so much, steph. and love being called in to think about my own playlists and noticing the desire to go back and do some curating again. i've added florence's "shake it out", compliments of following chains 28-day breakthrough curriculum <3 <3 <3