AMP: The Aboriginal Music Project

The Idea
The Aboriginal Music Project is an online, interactive blog for high-school aged Aboriginal students to produce, share, and learn from videos that focus on music from Aboriginal communities across Canada.
AMP is an Opportunity
AMP can give youth the opportunity to produce short video features on music’s presence in their communities. The content of the videos is open: participants can create original clips about groups that play in their community today, about the traditional music of their families, ancestors, and nations, or about their own musical talents.
The Forum
Blogs are a cost-effective, popular medium for sharing information, and kids visit them, a lot. Adults do too, and AMP could be a space where we all could learn much about Aboriginal music in Canada.
The Music
Urban and rural communities are full of talented Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal musicians of all ages whose creativity touches every genre. AMP is a place where youth can bring the talents of their peers to the rest of Canada.
Videos could take the form of a biographic feature on a local hip-hop act in Vancouver; a documentary style video on the traditional music of the Ojibway of northern Ontario; and clips of a young videographer playing her own original country ballad.
The Motivation
Making videos is fun, especially when the creative process involves sharing the experience with friends, peers, and other artists. As a further incentive, AMP could partner with franchise and local music stores to provide charitable gifts of musical instruments for the AMP blogger’s school.
Community and Storytelling
The Aboriginal Music Project is a means to develop young people’s understanding of how musical expression galvanizes community.
It challenges children to communicate with community members and listen to their neighbour’s stories about their experience with musical expression. Furthermore, speaking to community members will teach youth about the ethical use of cultural expression, and AMP can also be a forum to promote ethical expression.
What’s most exciting is that youth from across Canada will learn about other communities’ and nations’ cultural traditions, stories, and music scenes, regardless of where they live.
Musicology, Graphic Arts and Video Arts
AMP can be an opportunity for teens to explore the language and technicality of song writing, genre, and performance. It can also give kids a chance to express themselves through digital film-making, a challenge that presents the opportunity to learn about editing and editing software; story writing; and camera technique.
Sustainability
If The Aboriginal Music Project gets the right start, it can grow like all blogs do: through users providing original content and interacting online. The advantage of AMP over traditional blogs is that AMP’s content is not produced by a solitary blogger, but by a community of artists and music appreciators across Canada. Thus, the potential for sustainability is as great as the talent of Canadian musicians and the Aboriginal youth who tell their stories.
Costs
The start up costs for the AMP website are minimal. Blog webspace is available for free, but a more productive forum would be a professional blog, which also has negligible costs.
However, to get the right start, the bulk of any funds would have go to marketing AMP by getting word out to youth. Funds would also have to be provided to personnel to create, maintain, and monitor the content on the AMP blogspace. In addition, further resources would need to be provided to personnel to create partnerships that would eventually help sustain the educational goals of AMP.
Potential Partnerships
AMP can be a launch pad for creating connections with institutions that can offer resources (be they educational, informational, and/or financial) that would foster musical art in Aboriginal communities.
What Can You Do to Help?
Vote For AMP!