Personal letter
We see it daily! Knife attacks, shootings, bombs, arson, criminal gangs, drug vending! Adolescents from age 11 and up are holding guns, knives, or drug packs! Criminal gang-leaders, with no respect for lives, manipulate from behind!
We also read and hear about problem schools where teachers are being threatened by teenagers who since long have abandoned any kind of hope for their future. These are schools where knowledge and self-esteem is luxury for the few. These are schools where few teachers want to work and most children are deprived of finding out who they are, how to express themselves and what they can do with their lives. “Despair” is a mild word to describe their worlds.
From Bullet…
I have seen and been exposed to these worlds personally. Behind the wheel in a cab, working to pay for my music studies during the mid-seventies, I saw and met the extremes of Society. I still have led in my right arm, led from a bullet stemming from a gun held by a nineteen-year old boy. He wanted to impress on his “buddies” that he dared to do what they only talked about! Rob a cab! My cab!
June 19, 1975 is a date forever imprinted in my bones! And that’s almost fifty years ago! A steady “march to hell” has been allowed to escalate further and further down the ages since 1975. Our decision makers have no clue how to stop it! More prisons and longer prison terms are certainly not the solution!
… to Fiddle
In the spring of 1990 I met a possible answer how to change the direction of Society!
In the public school system in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, every single child get to “touch an instrument”! The music program was founded by Elizabeth H. Green in the early 1940’s. Today this same music program involves all 17 000 students in all of the public schools in Ann Arbor.
Elizabeth H. Green was the person who invited me to move from the conducting program at Juilliard to the conducting program at the Michigan University in Ann Arbor. Ms. Green became my mentor outside of the regular conducting study program at the university and the door opener to the music program in the Ann Arbor Schools.
Documentary films since 1990
I made a documentary film about the music program in Ann Arbor in the spring of 1990! It was the first of many documentary films about music programs involving all students in regular schools. I have visited and made short documentary films in regular but music making schools in England, Norway, Finland and Sweden. In 2005 and in 2016 I revisited and made “follow-up-films” in Ann Arbor.
Thirty-four years with a film camera in hand “peeping” behind curtains!
Making documentary films in schools has allowed me to get behind curtains, to see, to hear and to connect with children, parents, teachers and school leaders. In interviews and conversations with all these individuals I have heard about experiences how music brings perspectives and discoveries to young minds. Every school (or music making ensembles with young people) that I have visited during more than thirty-four years, have one thing in common: Pride!
Pride!
Every single child, parent, teacher or school director that I have talked with the last thirty-four years have shown pride about their music programs and have talked with enthusiasm about what music brings to their schools. They have talked about how music affects the school environment, study motivation and study results. They have spoken about how the logics of music has made complex matters easier to overcome, how the musical classroom turns into chambers where children learn to appreciate challenges because they discover that they can master difficulties.
The rehearsal room trains skills to concentrate, to structure, to listen, to respect and to help others. Differences in skin colors, religion, culture and languages disappear in making music.
Learning to express emotions!
In working with music children learn to express emotions in constructive ways together with others and discover that they are seen, accepted and appreciated for what they do and for who they are.
Working towards clear goals in near future – no place for nastiness!
Let’s look at the music-making class as an ensemble! Every ensemble anywhere in the world knows that working towards a clear goal in near future, a performance, sharpens motivation and inspires to work harder. In the rehearsal room, preparing for a performance, regardless if it’s a big concert or a small performance for a parental meeting, there is no place for nasty comments or bullying! Such actions destroy the end result. Nobody wants to make a bad concert!
A professional and structured music teacher!
An expressive, engaging and goal-oriented music teacher does not have to scream to obtain discipline and concentration. Working on expressing the core of the music with a “performance looming next week” as the stimulating goal – does the job!
There is no more efficient way of obtaining concentration than working in detail with the music! When concentration is directed on how to sing or play a musical phrase, expressing the text, the dynamics, the intonation and the sculpting of expressions that touches everybody’s hearts, everybody gets involved!
Scientific research shows that music making enhances study results and more…
Not only has scientific research found that music affects many parts of our brains in positive ways. Scientific studies have demonstrated how music sharpens abilities to concentrate and stimulate study motivation.
A study in Switzerland 1989-92 showed how adding extra music up to five hours per week and cutting theoretical subjects with three hours resulted not only in enhanced study results but it also created better school environments, developed creativity, social skills and enhanced abilities to work in teams.
If every child would receive music there would be no wars!
In my interviews several adults (parents, teachers) have stated that musical classrooms involving all children could eliminate all wars! Wars on battlefields, in classrooms, on streets and in homes!
Children who get to learn to sing from early age, who get to learn to play instruments and… foremost… get to make music together in choirs, bands and orchestras of various kinds, develop minds, ears, brains and senses that build platforms for life!
Could Society be transformed through music + children? After 34 years of seeing and listening to what happens in schools when children get keys to music my personal answer is a decisive YES! But! It has to start early! It’s too late already when children are five or six years old. It has to start the very first year in pre-school! It has to be led by professional, dedicated, structured, motivating and goal-oriented music teachers!
Is music and all other Art forms the miracle cure solving all problems?
Making music, painting, dancing, acting, writing, reading great literature are all ingredients forming human minds. There is no miracle cure solving all the problems in the world. But allowing all children keys to the worlds of the Arts is a very strong “first step” that can affect the entire world in miraculous ways
.It’s a lot better step than doing nothing!
Göran Staxäng Director, Festival & Forum 21