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Smithsonian Folkways has announced the launch of the Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways, an innovative new teaching tool designed to illuminate lesser-known corners of music history using the sounds and resources available in the label’s iconic catalog. The Music Pathways are a free resource available to educators, parents, and the general public, contiguous with Folkways’ mission of making the sounds of the world broadly accessible and increasing understanding among people and cultures. Two Pathways are available now: Estoy Aqui: Music of the Chicano Movement and Cajun and Zydeco Music: Flavors of Southwest Louisiana, with a third covering women in the blues forthcoming. The Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways offer step-by-step guides through both the music and the history of the people who made it, offering moments for listening, reflection, hands-on activities, and storytelling for teachers and learners in all subjects.  

The Music Pathways are a first-of-their-kind lesson-plan resource that meets national academic standards in a variety of subjects, such as Common Core, National Standards for Music Education, and more. The Pathways present music within many contexts, allowing students to discover how music connects to historical moments and why it sounds as it does. Lesson plans are situated like nesting dolls inside larger inquiries of study, allowing students, educators, and parents to move between different topics within each Pathway easily and logically. Music Pathways are currently available for students in grades 6-8, with Pathways for additional age groups to be launched. 

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Extensive resources from across the Smithsonian are utilized throughout the Music Pathways. Audio, liner notes, and artwork that comprise many releases on Smithsonian Folkways (and other collections, such as Arhoolie Records) are positioned adjacent to photographs, video, scholarship, and other media from nearly every museum and unit of the Institution. Learners are able to see, hear, and directly engage with primary resources that illustrate the vibrancy of the cultures and relevance of the histories being explored. These comprehensive, ready-made resources are able to be immediately implemented in classroom and hybrid learning environments, providing educators with vetted, engaging deep dives that cover multiple perspectives on the histories being uncovered. Each Music Pathway, in its entirety, contains 12-18 hours of rich, thematic, multidisciplinary content that is customizable based on the needs of individual teachers and students in a variety of learning contexts. Music, history, and other humanities teachers alike will find lesson plans that will make for easy curricular integration and standards fulfillment.

While the Music Pathways were designed with national education standards in mind, they are also perfect for independent and lifelong learners, as well as anyone interested in learning more about the histories behind their favorite LPs released by Smithsonian Folkways. They are excellent supplemental resources for parents who wish to introduce their children to music and culture from around the world. 

As a leader in resources for music educators for over 30 years, Smithsonian Folkways now charts a new direction for educational projects at the label. In 2024, Folkways received an internal grant through the Smithsonian's Together We Thrive initiative to support an in-house curriculum specialist overseeing educational offerings like the Music Pathways. "We are thrilled that Dr. Jennifer Mellizo, a music educator and respected researcher with over 22 years of teaching experience in K-12 classrooms, joins us as our first full-time educator at the label," said Folkways Director and Curator Maureen Loughran. "The Smithsonian's commitment to education at Folkways encourages us to further develop deep contextual resources, like Music Pathways, and explore new projects dedicated to teachers and students from all parts of the world." Under Mellizo’s supervision, a third Music Pathway on women and the blues will be released later in 2025.