When it comes to music in our schools, I may not be the best person in the world to talk to.  I am pretty biased when it comes to what I believe are the benefits of music for all children.  You see, I have been the beneficiary of this amazing subject matter for such a long time that I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t an important part of my life.  I have since hopefully become a benefactor as well, passing on the gift of music and the importance of music education to others.  

I say that I may not be the best person because I’ve never known anything else.  My earliest memories are of listening and singing to music on the albums my dad gave me and those he listened to himself.  Listening to and understanding music, discerning the names of the instruments I heard and matching pitches with the vocalists was something I did on a daily basis.  I think that as a child I assumed everyone did this.  I loved to sing and there was something so satisfying about making my voice sound like whoever I was listening to, the more chromatic, the better.  I was audiating before I understood what it was, picking pitches out of the air because I could hear them in my head.  I remember making an advanced choir in 6^th grade and the audition consisted of listening to a song a few times and then trying to sing what I remembered.  Apparently I did well, but I remember not being very sure of myself, as I was just singing what I thought was the next natural progression, not reading.  Doesn’t everyone do that?  What a gift that was.

That gift saved me in aural skills in college where for me it was a combination of sightreading and going where it sounded like it needed to go.  That’s what happens when you file an amazing amount of repertoire in your head from day one.  I just wish it had done the same for me in theory.  But that’s another blog for another day.  Music for me was all about how it sounded and how it made me feel.  It still is, and because it was so powerful for me, I want others to experience this as well.

This gift also saved me during the dark times of my life. Times where I was afraid and needed refuge.  A place I could go when someone told me I was a failure and music told me deep down that I was not.  A place where I could go and know these were my people when members of my own family were not.  It provided a place where I belonged, forging lifelong friends and taking me places I never dreamed I would be.  Music has provided an opportunity to meet the most amazing people who also believe in the power of music and it challenges me on to doing even more than I thought I could.  How could I ever NOT wish this for my students, my student teachers, my fellow colleagues?

How could you not want this for all students?  How could you not celebrate and advocate for music in our schools?  You may say, well, music is just not my thing.  I get that.  So, if it’s not your thing, don’t ever attend a concert again.  Don’t ask for a pep band at the basketball game or a marching band for football.  Don’t have music in a movie to help propel the story.  Don’t sing to show solidarity. Don’t have music for your wedding or your parent’s funeral. Don’t sing with that favorite song that takes you back to another time.  Even for those who say music is not your thing, you can’t escape it.  Because as I said in my last blog, it is a part of your DNA.  It is a part of what it is to be human. Why again, should it not be essential in our public schools? Not everyone is as fortunate as I was to have a music lover in the house who wanted to share that love with me.  He often shared his regret of not pursuing his music further as a young person, so he made it a point that at least I would learn to love it.  I am grateful.

So yes, I’m a little biased – or a lot biased.  I believe music is every bit as essential as any and every other subject.  I believe every child would benefit academically, physically, spiritually and emotionally if they just had music emphasized in schools, just as reading and math are emphasized.  I believe these things because I have lived and continue to live them.  And we haven’t even begun to look at the research behind this.  Another blog for another day.  In the meantime, why don’t you go to Spotify or pull out your favorite album from back in the day and find that song that takes you back.  You might be more biased towards music than you think.