Dr. Bradley Koch, a 2002 Belmont alumnus, recently led an innovative project for students in his Sociology of Music class at Georgia College, where he currently serves as an associate professor.
Each semester, Koch gives his class the option to do a traditional research paper or an alternative option that would excite and challenge his students to learn the complexities of the music business and sociology.
For the fall semester, Koch’s students opted to write, record and release an original song featuring sociological themes, and the impact was everything Koch hoped it would be. “The students seem to have been affected in a few ways,” he said. “First, and most importantly to me in my capacity as their sociology professor, is that they really wrestled with some timely social justice issues in the lyrics, most notably racism and economic inequality. They were able to stay true to the social nature of the issues while still making it an engaging, individual-level narrative. Second, the students had to confront the communal nature of music-making as well as the social-ness of marketing a product. Finally, the students were energized knowing that any revenue that the song generated would go to a good, local cause of their choosing.”
Proceeds from the completed song, “Stuck,” will help provide a free laundromat for families at a local elementary school.
The recording is available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and YouTube.
Koch came to Belmont for the music business program. While taking Introduction to Sociology to fulfill a general education requirement, Koch decided to change direction. In 2002, he graduated with a major in sociology and minor in music business.
“Even though I dedicated my professional life to sociology and higher education, music has always remained ‘serious leisure’ to me… I was able to draw on my studio production training from my time at Belmont in engineering and producing the record that my students just released. It really was the confluence of two seemingly-divergent parts of my life, both of which were fostered by my peers and the faculty at Belmont.”
Visit Koch’s website to learn more about the project and to listen to “Stuck.”
