Hidden deep in the report of Candace Coker, 16-year old winner of this year's President's Medal for her academic performance at the CSEC level, were these lines: "Music is a big part of my life.My grandmother taught us to play the piano and then my father taught us to use the guitar. I also learned to write music for myself and I have been doing that ever since I was six years old."Reading of Candace's academic success, is confirmation of the little understanding we now have of how the study of music affects the learning ability of children.
Recent research has shown that music has the power to engage, relax, and energise us, and studies report that the study of music makes children smarter. However, although the ability to learn continues throughout life, hands-on participation in music between the ages of three and ten seems to train the brain for higher thinking, and children who miss out on the fun of playing music may also miss some critical developmental opportunities.Essentially, music provides a healthy, natural and invaluable opportunity for individual expression while encouraging the development of the whole child, enhancing cognitive, social, physical, and emotional skills. Music has been found to stimulate every area of the developing brain, and similar studies with youngsters have linked early musical exposure to superior motor skills and even social abilities.
Our young people are being ever more actively dissuaded from having contact with the classical genius of Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Instead, what our children are exposed to is what was referred to all that we need: "ah lil Marley, chutney, soca and calypso."The popular opinion is that an education towards an understanding of, and working with, serious western classical music is "elitist." This is not "our" culture, we are told and I look at China with its long history of civilization and culture. The Chinese had developed their own notation system even before the western classical music was even dreamed of, yet, it is the western classical music that is now taught in their schools. Why? Do they understand something that we are choosing to ignore?
This year Norway introduced classical music for all students from 7 to 14 years of age. Music is now as compulsory for their students as Maths and English is for our students. We must ask our selves? why?Musical education in our schools needs to be encouraged and fostered, however, if this is not done, parents should seek to educate their children in music elsewhere? but it should be available to ALL our children if we are to see great strides made in curbing violence in our society.
It is interesting to read what philosopher Peter Kreeft reported on music: "The ancient Chinese emperors used to walk through each of the cities in their realm listening to the music the citizens sang and played. If it was bad music, the emperor took the trouble to send his officials to check on the people's social, economic, sexual, religious and moral affairs; but if it was good music, they were left alone to govern themselves. The emperor knew that music was the antenna of the soul." Peter Kreeft.
If time travel were a reality, and one great Chinese emperor was zoomed into Trinidad for any of our calypso/soca or chutney shows, as a friend said on reading this: "what would such a barometer say of the T&T society?" And one does not have to wonder-the result is all around us, everywhere.What we have in T&T is inverted snobbery at its most pungently destructive. Western classical music is not "elitist." While every child may not develop into a musical master, every child does have the potential to benefit from classical music-especially when music teaching takes a broad sensory approach.
We continue throwing money at the same areas-year in, year out for "donkey's years" expecting a different result and change in our society! What madness. All over the world the most "civilised" societies are recognising the value of training in classical music for their youth and it is time that we sat up and took stock of this fact. We should also consider how the skills learned would translate into greater composers and musicians for our steelbands and all of our very indigenous culture, even in dance.
Do we want to be totally irrelevant in the very instrument to which we have given birth? For who knows, or really cares where the piano or violin was invented? I would be surprised if 1 per cent of the readers of this newspaper could answer that question. But we know the great pianists, the great violinists and guitarists-and soon, the world will recognise the virtuoso pannists. Will he or she be a Trinidadian?When two years ago a 19-year-old student, Andre White beat out all the Trini composers in the arrangers' section for steelband in New York (Andre has since begun music study at Berkelee College) we must sit up and take stock of what we are doing.
One last point. It has been recorded that the students at our orphanages who study music, are the very ones who, on leaving, are well adjusted, find jobs and more easily integrate their lives into society than those who are not given that opportunity. The choice is ours to make-and for the sake of our nation, I pray that we make the right choice!
Annette Dopwell, Director
Classical Music
Development Foundation of Trinidad & Tobago