Professor Shares Passion For Percussion

LOVE OF MUSIC

When Crawford was seven years old, his father got orders to go to Vietnam with the U.S. Air Force. To keep him busy and distracted while his dad was overseas, Crawford’s mom decided to enroll him in music lessons. Having watched his older brother play in middle school band concerts, the youngster decided he wanted to try out drumming. Little did he or his parents know these les­sons would open his eyes to a lifelong passion that turned into a career that led him to UMHB as the director of percussion studies and teaching music history.

Falling in love with music and its vast history seemed to come naturally to Crawford whose father was of Scottish descent and mother of Mexican descent, not to mention that he lived in several states and countries since his father moved around for the military. The birth of his instrument collection began when Crawford and his wife, Dr. Ann Crawford, a professor in the nursing department, were married and began traveling the world.

Studying music wasn’t always his first choice of career, however. Crawford originally planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Air Force, but an eye injury at the age of 13 altered that path. “I really wanted to go into aviation; music was my second option,” he said. “But I wouldn’t change a thing now.”

While studying for his undergraduate music degree at Minot State University in North Dakota, Crawford says he had an amazing humanities professor who modeled the kind of teacher he one day wanted to be.

“What I found fascinating from him was that he would show us his personal pictures from his travels instead of stock pictures and he had stories behind everything,” he said. When Crawford began traveling the world, he too started chronicling special moments from his adventures to share with his students.

“If we’re talking about the music of Peru in one of my classes, I can show them pictures of Machu Picchu and the native musicians playing there and be able to tell them the story behind it. It enraptures them and brings them into the story,” he said. “It’s a much more effective way of teaching music history, which could otherwise be relatively dull.”

HANDS-ON IN THE CLASSROOM

Over the years, his students have enjoyed sharing their adventures from their travels and mission trips around the world, and some international students even make food from family recipes to share in class. Crawford says food provides the perfect example for him when discussing differences in music from places around the world.

“When the food element comes up, we talk about regions of music and how it’s like food,” he said. “For instance, you can’t just talk about 'barbecue' because somebody’s going to ask, ‘Texas, Kansas City, Memphis or St. Louis barbecue? What about North Carolina?’ Music is the same way as food. You can’t just say, ‘African music’ because Africa is the largest continent on the planet. There’s not just one kind. If we can’t do that with food, we can’t do that with music.”

For his world music classes, at the end of each semes­ter, he likes to treat his students to “hands-on African drumming.”

Over the last few years, the university has amassed a collection of close to 30 African drums. Crawford and his students form a drum circle and he teaches them about multi-layering of rhythms and music.

“They learn it all verbally, as many cultures do, without written notation,” he said. “And they thoroughly enjoy it. We have nursing majors, football players and business majors, along with some music majors, sitting in the room drumming for an hour, swapping instruments. They have a ton of fun, but they don’t know that they’re actually learning all this high-end African drumming. They really enjoy that kind of hands-on component.”