The Music We Play

by Vince Ferry, Valencia High School

There are very few activities where the sound system is not blasting with lyrics flying freely across the gym or quad. Let’s face it music matters. A good activity is only made better when accompanied by a great song, and an “okay” activity is sometimes salvageable by a song the student body likes and enjoys hearing. However, music can work against you.

I want to share a short story about an activity I ran my very first year as an activities director. We were having our spring Sprolic Week. This is a week filled with spirit and lots of activities. Sprolic Week became so popular that our local newspaper came out and wanted to cover the fun filled week. During one of our activities, I allowed a student to play a radio clean version of a song that fit the activity. Unfortunately, just because it was radio friendly didn’t mean it was school friendly. I was guilty of not closely vetting the appropriateness of the song. Well, our school made the front page of the paper the next day, but it was not for the fun filled activities- the original reason the newspaper came out. No, we made the front page of the paper for playing an inappropriate song during a school activity. Well, I listened to the song again, and yes, although inappropriate words were removed from the song, it still contained inappropriate content. This was just a case where I did not pay close enough attention to the content of the lyrics. Needless to say, I learned my lesson. I quickly created a rubric for acceptable songs that could be played. I also formed a music committee in which they were responsible for filtering music before they presented it to me. Quickly I noticed that the music committee did a good job of discerning what was appropriate and what was not, and very rarely did I find a song that I thought they missed the ball on.

It is important to remember that many activities, such as football and basketball games, attract an audience from 3 year olds to 80 year olds. We need to work diligently to make sure that families can come to an activity and not be subjected to music that is inappropriate to this wide range of age groups. I have a good friend, and probably the best DJ Company in the state of California, PegLeg Entertainment. I frequently call him to ask about a variety of songs. He does an outstanding job of telling me what songs are school appropriate and which are not. The owner of PegLeg Entertainment is a great guy, and he would be happy to answer questions you may have pertaining to pop music.

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