Re: Teens and Jewish Music

[Adrian A. Durlester <durleste...>]

Sociological studies aside, I think perhaps we do ourselves and our youth a 
grave disservice by lumping the children all into one homogenous group. Yes, 
certain styles of music may become popular among a large segment of the youth 
population, but each child is unique. We must carefully separate the approval 
of musical styles that comes from peer pressure and wanting to feel "cool" and 
a child's real opinions about music.

I grew up listening to mostly classical music. But the AM bubblegum music of my 
youth, and the Motown sounds popular in my racially mixed environment were just 
as attractive and fascinating to me.  I think this is because my philosophy was 
sound - fun music is fun music, and music of any kind can be fun.

Let's take a dangerous word: "discerning." If I were to suggest that we teach 
out children to have "discerning" musical tastes, many would assume this is an 
effete and snobbish approach. That is because they identify "discerning" with 
words like "classy", "tasteful" etc. Some might even suggest that the standard 
be higher than "discerning" that the standard be "good." Doing so plays into 
the hands of the "garbage music" antagonism that Karen Daniel describes. One 
person's garbage is another person's banquet.

I disagree that music has to be "good music" to be enjoyed. Our culture is 
replete with poorly written and performed music that nevertheless is just plain 
fun and enjoyable. Let's keep the standard at "fun" and "enjoyable" and not 
raise it to "good." Can you resist "Louie, Louie" ? (And look how successfully 
that was turned into a fun Jewish parody, "Pharaoh, Pharaoh.")

I say we must teach our children to have discerning taste in music. What this 
means to me is that they have the ability to listen to some music, decide that 
they like it, and try to figure out just what qualities appeal to them.  This 
enables to seek out and find other music that has similar qualities. But it 
does not prejudice them against exploring other forms. It enables them to get 
beyond peer pressure in determining the parameters of their own musical tastes.

Next time a young person says to you they don't like some music because it's 
"boring" or "too adult" or "uncool" challenge them to tell you why they react 
to it that way. Then help them through the process of understanding what 
visceral, intellectual and emotional reactions they are having to the music and 
why. Then, the next step is to teach them to use this new knowledge as a tool 
to help them identify the characteristics in all forms of music that they find 
"fun" and "enjoyable."

The only way to teach children to have discerning musical taste is to expose 
them to a wide variety of music-and allow them to react to it however they want 
to. Let them say and feel "yuck" or "cool" or "boring" or "wow."

And to build off of Rachel's comments-maybe we should focus less on our 
teaching the kids new songs and let them teach new songs to us?

Here's a thought for Karen. Instead of teaching a song you wrote on a 
particular theme, ask the class to write their own song on that theme. Then, 
through and after the process, examine why the music was crafted they way it 
was. Then maybe introduce your song and explain what motivated you to craft it 
as you did. Relate your creative experience to the one experienced by the 
class.

I think that might be a good idea. When is the last time we let our students do 
the musical creating instead of our trying to teach tem the music we or someone 
else had already created? Hmmm.

As usual, my remarks were meandering and I'm not even sure I made a point. But 
it was fun to think about this.

Adrian


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Adrian A. Durlester  -  durleste (at) plains(dot)nodak(dot)edu
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/durleste/
Production Manager, Festival Concert Hall, North Dakota State University
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/durleste/fchcont.html
Director of Music, Temple Beth El, Fargo ND
http://www.uahc.org/nd/tbefargo/
List-Owner for hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org; Co-Owner for L-Torah (at) 
shamash(dot)org
http://uahc.org/hanashir
Editor, Bim Bam (for Torah Aura Productions)
Evening Program Chair, CAJE 23 - San Antonio TX, Aug 9-13, 1998
http://www.caje.org
Alternate Email: aad (at) iname(dot)com  adriand (at) aol(dot)com