ANNOUNCING NEA SUPPORT FOR NEW ARABIC MUSIC COURSE

With great pleasure, S’Cool Sounds would like to announce its approval as a 2023 Challenge America grant recipient by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Through this funding, SCS will be able to develop and implement the course piloting of Ya Habibi: A Musical Journey through the Arab World at P.S. 86 in the Bronx. In addition, it will give us the ability to produce an accompanying video series for the Learning Resources site that will be free to educators everywhere.

The inspiration for creating an Arabic music course came from feedback at P.S. 86 last year. Teachers at the school shared that their students were particularly excited when learning two Arabic songs included in our residency curriculum. P.S. 86 has a growing population of immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries, and these students very rarely see their culture reflected in the school’s curriculum, and almost never hear their language spoken by teachers or administrators. The inclusion of two Arabic songs during music class was proving incredibly meaningful to them.

Because we have had prior success developing popular thematic courses based on the interests of our students and the talents of our diverse team of teaching artists—Alegría Musical: Latin American Stories, and Jazz and the World of Black American Music, have collectively reached over 10,000 NYC school children—we realized that a full course devoted to popular and classical Arabic music could provide great benefit not only to these eager students at P.S. 86, but to public school students, of all backgrounds, throughout New York City.

We look forward to working with the NEA to finalize the grant process and appreciate the agency’s support for this project. We thank you for your ongoing support, be on the lookout for future updates!