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istening to music is a daily event for most young people.Many adolescents devote hours to their personal music libraries. Yet when asked to describe the music they listen to and collect, they are hard-pressed to say more than "I like it" or "It's got a great beat." For them, musical listening is an intuitive experience, one that reflects moods and memories, fashion and fun. Some philosophers consider music a mostly "felt experience," which means that musical thinking does not require verbal thinking. Bennett Reimer, for example, has written that language "need not be and typically is not applied to the sounds we are engaged with in musical experience."' But Reimer also tells us that discussion in the music classroom that helps us to "know why, [is] probably the most neglected aspect of music education."2 We need language to pursue this sort of discussion. Equipping students with the skills and language to discuss, describe, and defend music they know and like, as well as music that is new and different, is an essential aspect of music teaching.The music classroom is the perfect setting for investigative and imaginative inquiry-for teaching students how to talk about music. Because dialogue that is done well is too dynamic (dare we say I re Students can gain a deeper understanding of music by participating in discussions of music used in class. When teachers ask thought-provoking questions about music, students can build language and thinking skills to help them talk about the music they encounter throughout their lives.

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In this article, narratives of a salsa concert and a lesson with a Native American flute performer provide openings for exploring grooves and their application in the music classroom. The term groove is examined, along with some non-Western ideas about time as represented in the music of the West African Kpelle people. A sixth-grade composition project in upstate New York offers a window on nontraditional notation and compositional models that hold potential to deepen and extend students’ understanding of rhythmic structures and concepts.