The music education I had in grades 1-8 was pretty much banging on percussion instruments, a little bit of singing, those horrid class performances....

Fortunately I started formal music lessons before age 5. By the time I got to kindergarten I could read music on the scale, knew about downbeats and what "2 and 4" was about, knew that the black keys were called sharps and flats.... so by about the 3rd or 4th grade music in grade school was pretty much a joke for me. There were 2 other guys who played instruments and we used to bring our stuff in for entertainment days. I am Slovenian and grew up in an ethnic neighborhood where polka and waltz was all they knew, and we all played accordion, so there would be three us up there with accordions.

Moving on to high school where you had actual band with brass and instruments, as well as percussion, piano, string bass, etc.... there we had better teachers. I sang in chorale in high school. I remember even in the 60s that the teachers would often buy stuff out of pocket rather than fight with the school board about $50 worth of supplies.

When I got to college (after the service), I had been playing 18 years already and tested through 101, 102, 103, 201, 202, 203 and went right to performance. Now you're talking. State funded college. Anything we wanted, we got.

Then move ahead when I went back to college for the computer degree in 1991. Already schools were cutting back some. I was taking some music education courses, thinking that as I got out of playing I might like to teach. The instructor in one of the first classes I had was a trumpet player who I happened to know. We went out for a beer after class one night and we were talking, and he asked why I wanted to teach. I told him about the giving back part, the interest in helping kids, etc.... He said "I teach high school. I teach 2 nights a week here at the college. I direct a community band, and I gig a few times a month. With all that, I can barely make ends meet. You turn all your work in on really well done computer printouts, and I hear you practicing before class. You play well, and you know computers. I think teaching would be a real letdown for you with the school board politics and all." And this wasn't a guy who came off as particularly jaded or anything.

Now I said all that to say this. I can not IMAGINE going to the school board because my junior high band needs new conga drums and being told there was no budget. My reply would be something like "Maybe you didn't hear me. My kids need new conga drums. Sign the &^!$%%^@ form so I can order them. And do it now." And then the police would escort me out and I would never teach again. That wouldn't have worked out for me.

Yet my very dear friend LOVES teaching. She teaches junior high aged kids, is a great player and amazing singer (like Emmylou Harris!!) and just loves what she does. She also talks about the school board cutting to the bare minimum and that some day they would eliminate music completely. (She works in a small suburb where the population is not among the sharpest knives in the drawer to start with.) And that would be sad.

I can't imagine what my life would have been without the inspiration I got from The Beatles coming to town, and the exhilaration I get from hearing Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik, and the power and majesty of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, or the calming strains of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Music is everywhere if you allow yourself to hear it. I was in Arizona in 1980 staying with a buddy who had dirt bikes. One night late I went for a ride and I went WAY out into the desert, so far out that there was no "city" around me. No city lights, no city noises. Just me, the sand, a little breeze and enough moon to see where the snakes were. To the uninitiated, it was dead silence. But to me, I heard a music out there I had not heard before, or since. The wind blowing the sand, the snakes and the lizards moving with a soft whoosh, the occasional distant call of some animal or another.... that is a music you can't describe, and my description did not give it justice. A beautiful calm.

And that's what kids will miss if there is no music training. They will still listen to their iPods, but listening to this angry, racist, sexist, awful music with lyrics all about "biatch" and "ho'" and "nigga" and "muthafucka".... what happened to our craft? When did it become so angry and violent? More importantly, why? Is it necessary?

"All you need is love....."

Edited to add:

And none of that would have happened or mattered had there not been music education in schools.

Last edited by eddie1261; 08/03/11 06:05 PM.