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I’ve said this (or something similar) in public and online before, so I may as well say it here . . .
Good-intentioned passion is not enough. We've had 1000 years (since Guido) to test and perfect our musical systems and teaching methods. Yet, our success rate at producing "music makers" is appallingly low, even criminal. Passion alone is not enough — granting that most teachers have always been passionate. More important than passion is the agenda, the motive, the goal, the credo, the why we do this.
Music is a birthright. It belongs to every human being on the planet — not just to note readers. By making "note reading" the gauge, the goal, the focus, the test, we've lost and failed (at our duty) 99% of humanity, 99% of our proclaimed charge. We have the arrogance and audacity to deny, limit, place ultimatums and conditions upon, "who" will be "granted the privilege" of receiving our music teacher's attentions and under what circumstances.
The Credo
I believe it's a music teacher's duty, first and foremost, to facilitate making "music makers". That is, that every soul be better empowered to heal themselves to some greater degree. Short of having someone you feel safe with, holding you in their arms, comforting you, cooing, humming to you, rocking you, petting you, making your own music is the next best thing. It's self-medicating, healing, soothing, state-changing. It's so fundamental, music. And particularly for kids, teens, the tough social years, the depression that many teens suffer. If they, each and every one, could make their "own" music at will, be FACILITATED to make their own music by the ones who claim to be the facilitators, soothe and console themselves, carry themselves to a different place, a more beautiful place, a place of refuge and safety, places that music alone can take you, it could make all a difference, and throughout ones entire life thereafter. It is a birthright, music. It's a survival tool. It's a full fledged part of "preparing" you, and a necessary ingredient, for life. So the point is, making "music-makers" — not music-readers. That's #1.
If children ever get around to wanting to read music some day that's fine, but it's secondary (or even lower on the list) to what's important about music, and why it's important to teach/facilitate music. Learning how to read music does not stimulate nor heal. Making music does. If music in school effects other areas of scholastic achievement it's because of the brain stimulation, the firing neurons, the pleasure, the excitement, the joy, of those few who are ever allowed to get to point of making music.
The routine scenario is the ultimatum; If you agree to endure the (presumably mandatory) years of near torture and frustration of note reading, then, and only then, will you be permitted to play a musical instrument (in school, at school, on school time, with the assistance of our music teachers)“. So it's the priorities that I'm concerned about, vehement about. I want music teachers to understand what their real responsibility is:
It's not to the school board, nor to any curriculum
It's not about making note readers who can play someone "else's" music
It's not about finding bodies to fill up the vacated seats in the school band each year.
It's to make little healers, little self-healing souls, to help people make their "own" music.
That's the only gauge of success that matters. Anything that hinders or prevents that "one and only goal", anything that introduces and *induces* anxiety, tension, frustration, boredom, resentment, i.e. the "opposites" of what music is, is not music, does not represent music, is an impostor, the antithesis of music, an anti-musical agent, and needs to be shown the door and not let in until and unless any given student says "Come hither, it's you I want now, It's you I love".
Conversely, anything, any tools, that most efficiently promote, hasten, and ensure, that "one and only goal", must be sought out, embraced, and used, as a duty and "THE" responsibility.
So there's passion and there's passion. And the quantity of it, is not the key. The mission is what matters, the motives, the goal, the credo.
Credo = I believe
Creed = 1 : a brief authoritative formula of religious belief
2 : a set of fundamental beliefs; also : a guiding principle
Roger E. Blumberg
8-5-2003
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