The Music Fest event aim is to engage the external community with music in English language. It is an opportunity for people to perform, sing songs in different ways and rhythms, and also to present their own compositions. It is something that involves a lot of creative thoughts and engagement from the participants. This year’s edition of the event is very similar to the previous one, but it got some improvements that make it even better! The first and also the major change is the participants: instead of Unespar students, all the organization commission are engaged on having students from regular schools (public and private) to participate. In the words of professor Leila, “the idea behind the project is to build a bridge over the gap between university and basic education”. To make it possible, they contacted professor Afife, manager from NRE Apucarana, who then started to contact teachers from basic education to form this whole team. Together they “prepared the field” for this amazing event, bringing the song genre for the classes of regular schools, and encouraging students to take part in the event.

 

By now you must be asking yourself, how does Music Fest work? Well, it is time to take a look into the actual event: it is a music competition, and it is divided into 4 categories of music videos: Song Performance, which, as the name suggests, is focused in the performance itself; Song Composition, that is focused in the song creations of the students, either on the lyrics and melody of it; then, we have the Parody Song category, that is focused on parodies made by the students of original songs, and the last one, Free Song Creativity, where there are many possibilities for song creations. This last one in special has a new feature: the event is now accepting videos generated in apps such as the very popular TikTok, and others such as Smule and Starmaker. The new feature adds a lot to the approach with the teen students, since these apps are part of their reality.

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When it comes to judging the competition, it follows the same structure from last year. The judges are separated in three categories, aiming at judging distinct characteristics in the videos of the students. The first ones will be the Linguistic Judges, the judges shall be language teachers, that will mainly analyze the lyrics and the structure of the songs (the structure, if it matches the genre, vocabulary, etc.). Secondly, there are the Technical Judges, these judges shall have some type of understanding about music and music composition, (musicians, music teachers, etc.) and they will be analyzing the compositions, melodies and all features that belong to the music field. Lastly, the Artistic Judges shall obviously have some knowledge in artistic performances, since they will be responsible by judging the performic side of the videos.

With all of this the event became a dynamic way to share culture and learning. The participants who win get a prize from the supporters of the event, opening for them new doors and giving the incitement they need to even pursue, along with the passion for the language, another path for their talent.