Steve Holley

The How, What, and When of Popular Music in the Secondary Music Classroom - In this panel discussion with Tamara Thies, Amy Lui, Dennis Feinland, and I, we explore ways of including popular music in the secondary music classroom in an authentic manner. The panel hosts will facilitate a robust conversation, delving into a number of topics centering on contemporary ways of learning and teaching into the modern-day music learning environment. By delving into a number of topics including program and curricular development, collaborating with community stakeholders, cultivating a culturally relevant learning environment, and seeking opportunities to blend contemporary ways of learning and teaching into the modern-day music learning environment. This panel discussion, explores ways of including popular music in the secondary music classroom in an authentic manner. We hope you'll join the conversation!

Coaching a Popular Music Ensemble LIVE - How do you work with students who play a variety of instruments in a popular music ensemble? What do rehearsals look like? How do you facilitate a student-centered experience while also creating a musically educative learning environment? In this live demonstration, Dr. Steve Holley will be joined by a student lab band to share coaching strategies for encouraging creative, relevant music making for all. Based on his time as a Memphis musician and founding/directing a DownBeat Award-winning popular music program at a school in Colorado, Dr. Holley will share his tips, secrets, and philosophies while also expanding our ideas of what a 21st-century music classroom could look and sound like.

Coaching a Popular Music Ensemble LIVE - How do you work with students who play a variety of instruments in a popular music ensemble? What do rehearsals look like? How do you facilitate a student-centered experience while also creating a musically educative learning environment? In this live demonstration, Dr. Steve Holley will be joined by a student lab band to share coaching strategies for encouraging creative, relevant music making for all. Based on his time as a Memphis musician and founding/directing a DownBeat Award-winning popular music program at a school in Colorado, Dr. Holley will share his tips, secrets, and philosophies while also expanding our ideas of what a 21st-century music classroom could look and sound like.

Love And Theft: Moving From Appropriation to Appreciation in Popular Music Education - As popular music itself is based on a foundation of cultural interaction, exchange, assimilation, cross-pollinization, and appropriation, this discussion focuses on the ongoing conversations centering the concept of cultural appropriation is grounded in issues of systemic racism, power, exploitation, and harm enacted on the marginalized through the continued misuse of their culture(s). Specifically, how are the concepts of cultural exchange, appropriation, and appreciation intertwined and negotiated outside the classroom, and, more specifically, how might these constructs be realized within the popular music classroom?

Examining A Different Kind Of 360: Popular Music Education in the United States - In the music industry, a 360 deal engages the musician in a comprehensive business relationship with their record label—encompassing every supplementary aspect of their career to ensure the musician has the foundational support to develop into the well-rounded musical career. In this presentation, Kat Reinhert and I re-imagining this relationship as a heuristic helps identify the types of experiences and content knowledge beneficial to teachers and students as they engage in a popular music space. This experiential relationship explores and examines how these qualities are related and, more deeply, how they form a circle of knowledge and understanding that will support the collective as they explore the many facets of popular music education. 

Artists as teachers:  Exploring authentic ways of learning and teaching in popular music - Panel presentation with Cassandra O’Neal, Sarah Gulish, José Valentino Ruiz, Kat Reinhert, and Steve Holley - As popular music education flourishes, so does the need to identify, explore, and interrogate emerging approaches to teaching and learning through popular music. The members of the panel, who all entered teaching after being engaged as professional popular musicians, discuss the idea, “How might highly-experienced popular musicians approach the act of teaching popular music in a school setting?”

Workinonit: Creating and learning with J Dilla - Panel discussion with Eric Dalio, Julio Sequeira, Tom Wilson, Steve Holley, and Evan Tobias - This panel, comprised of secondary and university music educators who have been involved with Save The Music Foundation’s J Dilla Music Tech program for the past several years, focuses on how our students and teaching practices adapted to find paths to integrate music technology into our school’s music programs in ways that support students’ growth, learning, and creativity.

Traveling with students: Learning through experience - Have you ever wanted to take a student group on a trip but you just didn’t know where to begin? Where should you go? How should the trip be funded? In this session, we’ll address all your questions and more with someone who has organized and led over 30+ student trips, both domestic and abroad.