The Need for an Alternative: From Fantasy to Reality Myths
|
Hearing people talk about music in casual conversation reveals that there are a lot of misunderstandings about what things mean. Terms and expressions that label and define musical images are used so frequently that their meaning, which may have no basis in fact, comes to be accepted as truth. This is disturbing, because such thinking has the power to stop musical development in its tracks. The following words and phrases come up frequently in discussions about music and music learning. Musicians and Non-Musicians The people in the category of non-musicians see themselves as not being able to do musical things. They don’t try because somewhere along the line they got the idea that they aren’t good at it and will fail if they try; therefore, a vicious cycle is established because they will never do learn to do musical things if they don’t try. Where did these people get the idea that they are non-musicians? Probably some were told (often in school) that they should sing softer in Chorus because they can’t sing in tune or aren’t musically inclined. Some probably defined their self-image according to negative experiences with private music lessons. Once someone has identified herself as a non-musician, she moves farther and farther from experiences that would, if she were to try them, easily help to reinvent her self-image. Meanwhile, those who have been put – or put themselves – in this category are resigned to the fact that it’s just the way it is. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that professional musicians tend to like the distinction. They have worked hard, practiced long hours to get where they’ve gotten, and don’t want to think that any old mortal can wake up one morning and do what they do. To be called a musician one must have acquired musical knowledge and expertise, preferably in a formal setting. Of course there is the implication that there must have been talent in the first place. Then there is a group of people in the gray area who don’t really have a label. These people are untrained, but have somehow acquired comfort doing musical things, for example being able to pick out tunes by ear on the piano or strum songs on a guitar around a campfire. This group tends to make the “real” musicians somewhat uncomfortable. Regardless of the fact that it takes many hours of hard work to achieve musical proficiency, regardless of the fact that some people’s genetic predisposition will allow them to go farther, the blanket acceptance of these labels does nothing to help make the world a more musical place. Everyone is born with the potential to be musically involved, and we should be devoting our energies to identifying and nurturing everyone’s musicality, not coming up with labels that stifle a large segment of the population. Tone Deaf /Tin Ear/ Carrying a Tune Every time I hear someone refer to himself as tone deaf or having a tin ear, I wonder whether to nod and smile understandingly or stop the conversation and straighten things out. The fact is that there is no such thing as tone deaf. The phrase has no meaning. For a person to actually be tone deaf, it would require that he not be able to tell the difference between Beethoven’s Fifth and Mary had a Little Lamb. He would not be able to distinguish the tones, and both pieces would sound the same to him. In that case, he would indeed be tone deaf. Have you ever met anyone like that? When pinned down, someone will say, “Okay, what I really meant is that I can’t carry a tune.” This is a whole other thing. It has nothing to do with your hearing or ability to distinguish subtle musical nuance. (By the way, how do you know you aren’t carrying a tune if you’re tone deaf?) Carrying a tune means that you can get your voice to match a particular note or series of notes – notes which, by the way, you hear just fine. Getting your voice to cooperate is another matter. It’s a little like raising an eyebrow – a matter of finding the feeling. Once someone has gotten the sensation of what the voice feels like when singing high or low, the rest is just a matter of doing it a lot. More than semantics is at stake here. People’s use of these labels is self-defeating because it locks in a non-musical self-image and throws away the key. For someone to take the big step of rethinking all this, he would first have to acknowledge that being able to hear the difference between Beethoven’s Fifth and Mary Had a Little Lamb is a highly musical thing to be able to do. This level of musicianship is so much a part of all human hard-wiring that we don’t think of it as talent, but it is exactly that. A tremendously complex set of skills are at work when we instinctively know that music sounds high or low, loud or soft, smooth or jagged, happy or sad. Moreover, to call oneself unmusical is to show disrespect, not only to Nature, but to our culture. Whatever our specific cultural background, it is engrained at a very early age and plays a significant role in determining our responses to music we hear. A Westerner, unfamiliar with the Eastern sound of quarter tones, may be confused by their sound, while someone from the Middle or Far East would feel at home hearing those tones. Once we acknowledge that hearing is not the issue, we can talk about singing. Learning how to carry a tune requires a certain amount of uninhibited experimentation – harder for adults than children – and possibly a gentle guide, but it can be done. There are some tricks that can get a novice to feel her voice actually moving up and down in her head. The bottom line is that lack of singing ability is in no way a measure of someone’s innate musicality. In any case, permanently exiling these nonsense phrases to a remote island would be a step in a musical direction. Note-reading The teaching of notation is so accepted and taken for granted as a necessary part of learning music that there are well-known and highly respected philosophies of music education that base their entire methodologies on acquiring the skills of literacy, that is, learning to read and write notation. Their measure of success is whether each step in the linear progression is mastered. Along with this approach comes the not so subtle message that this is the correct way to learn about music. The approach is so well conceived in practice, and so efficient at achieving what it sets out to do, that the validity of what it sets out to do is rarely questioned. Actually, the type of musical notation that is taught in schools across the country and that serves as the cornerstone of many music curricula is very Western and very White. There are entire musical cultures all over the world that use a totally different notational system or no notation at all. From Uruguayan Candombe drummers to Maori Haka singing, music is happening without the help of our five line staff. It is humbling to look at a list of World Music organizations and see how many wonderful approaches to music making differ from ours in that and many other respects. It is said that Irving Berlin, composer of “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” “God Bless America” and one of the greatest and most prolific songwriters of all time, could not read a note of music and was only able to play on the black keys of the piano. Many capable music makers right here in the Western hemisphere learn their art by ear, rote, feel and other mysterious means, without using Western notation. A classical violinist in a symphony orchestra needs it – an Ozark fiddler doesn’t. I have come to believe that the overbalanced emphasis on learning musical notation stems from the fact that it has tangible components that can be broken down and taught. It is harder to teach the more intangible aspect of music which is, in fact, its essence. The “Empty Vessel” Theory/ The Lazy Child I’m not sure how far we’ve come in education in general, but in music education I can’t see we’ve gotten away from that thinking at all. Teachers are expected to subscribe to methodologies that have names and therefore credence, and systematically pour musical knowledge into the empty learner, whether in a music classroom or a private lesson. There are some problems with this way of thinking. First, it’s fallacious. No one comes to us empty. Every child has natural, uninhibited musicality and has been instinctively responding to and making music since infancy. Children sing, dance, rhyme, create and engage in music making without being taught. Of course treating a child as empty is also to discount the entire cultural background in which she has been immersed since birth. Second, each child is inclined to be musical in a different and fascinating way. Rather than teaching every child to do the same thing the same way, wouldn’t it be more interesting and productive for the teacher to become a learner – go on a quest to discover each child’s particular musicality? Third, children are not lazy. They may appear to be lazy about doing things they have no interest in, things that grown-ups have decided for them they should be doing, but when pursuing things that interest them, children are far from lazy. I have seen children who have been labeled as lazy or having attention deficit problems work very hard and with intense concentration for long periods of time on activities of their own choosing. Most important, when a teacher decides what musical things a child needs to know without considering the child’s natural musical inclinations, the child gets the idea that her individual interests, needs and inclinations don’t really count – they’re not important. When this happens, the child may rebel and fight for her inner Muse, becoming what is called a “behavior problem in music class.” Worse, she will compliantly go along with the teacher’s idea of what musical things are important, give up on discovering her musical identity, and forever feel unable to connect with music in a meaningful way.
|
© Meryl Danziger 2004