Assignment 17 - Final Speech - Drew

English Speech – Drew S.

In hard economic times like these, hard decisions have to be made about school funding as governments look to trim the education budget. And in most cases, the arts are the first to go. But the group within the arts targeted the most for budget cuts is music: band, orchestra, and choir. In an electronic world centered more and more around “real skills” like math and science, why even bother teaching music at all? Well, in music lies a crucial connection to our humanity, our most basic “human-ness.” Music is a truly universal language, spoken everywhere in the world, regardless of ability to read or even play music. Music is medicine, and has the power to heal and comfort people in time of great sorrow or emotional pain. And music is invaluable in helping young people, ALL young people, regardless of any preexisting condition, develop their identity, not to mention helping them out academically.

L.L. Zamenhof had good intentions when he created Esperanto. For those that don’t know, Zamenhof created Esperanto as a universal language, one that could be used in addition to one’s own language, one that is both easy not only to learn, but to understand. But for all his hard work, Zamenhof failed to recognize that there was already a universal language, one that everyone already spoke, and had been speaking for a very long time. He failed to consider the universal language called music. Music, like many languages, didn’t start out written. The first written music has been dated, according to researchers at James Madison University, to Byzantine times, but we know humans have been making music since the stone age, having recovered many ancient musical instruments. This deeply rooted ability enables us to understand across huge spans of time. [**Rhapsody in Blue** and discussion]   You don’t have to be dead to feel the meditative quality of Gregorian chant, or be as old as our grandparents to feel the groove of Elvis.  A lot of music is written without lyrics. I needn’t speak Russian to understand that Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is patriotic and triumphant. Every human is equipped with the ability to understand music, and because of this sweeping facility, we are able to express ourselves across not only physical but across cultural and language barriers as well. I don’t need to speak to French to appreciate the infectious beat of the French disco-tech that the French room plays daily. Nor do I need learn Spanish to grasp the passionate feel of a mariachi ballad. In his TED Talk, Eric Whitacre showed the world his internet choir 2.0. The Internet Choir 2.0, composed of over 2000 Youtube videos from 58 countries around the globe, together sang Whitacre’s piece “Sleep.” This power to connect across our electronic world is huge in connecting with our world.

Music is medicine, says Robert Gupta, violinist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in his TED talk of the same name. Gupta relates his encounter with a brilliant Julliard scholar who had to drop out due to his schizophrenic paranoia. A colleague of his asked Gupta to give a lesson to this man. During the lesson, the student began to experience some of his symptoms, including relating the invisible demons he was haunted by and his suspicion that people were poisoning his meals. Said Gupta, “he had this glint in his eyes,” that indicated he was about to lapse into another episode. Wondering what to do, Gupta, instead of continuing with the finer points of music (scales, arpeggios, etc.), just began playing; playing classics, complex ones too. And his student just joined in, playing some of the hardest pieces on violin by ear. After he calmed down, the student played large portions of other classics that he asked Gupta to finish. For this man, says Gupta, music is healing, is sanity. There are examples all around us. Music therapists work miracles every day in hospitals across the nation. They very rarely physically heal a patient, granted, but the miracles they can work psychologically and emotionally can be enormous. A member of my hand bell choir at church, Ms. Cantrell, whose funeral I attended and played at last week, was in the hospital for about a month and a half before she passed away. In the last two weeks, she was barely conscious, and would neither hardly say or even mutter anything (very indicative of bad illness for someone as talkative as her) nor move hardly at all, but for the times when people came and made music for her. A music therapist came for several days during those two weeks, our pastor came and sang to her as well as people from the congregation. And for those two weeks, it appeared as though she was making a comeback. She would talk a little, and hold and squeeze your hand. Ultimately, it couldn’t spare her any physical pain, but it alleviated huge amounts of emotion pain felt by this busy woman during her confinement to the hospital. If we do not teach our children to make or appreciate music, than we will lose one of the cheapest and most meaningful medicines anyone can administer.

And finally, the benefit to us, the young people. There is a clear and widely known correlation between music and academic achievement, but first onto things more important than test scores. According to the writer of the article “Is Music the Key to Success?” from the New York Times on October 12, 2013, music helps develop, “collaboration, creativity, discipline, and the ability to reconcile conflicting ideas.” Now, this writer isn’t a biased band teacher and didn’t pull these conclusions from thin air. They came to these conclusions talking to industry leaders and major players on the world stage, among them Woody Allen (successful actor), Condoleezza Rice (former secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (former chairman of the Federal Reserve), and Paul Allen (billionaire co-founder of Microsoft), all of whom had participated in music while getting their education. These, among many world leaders (like former president Bill Clinton, as another example), show the correlation between music and success. When asked if these were just coincidences, Mr. Greenup said, “I can tell you as a statistician, the probability that that is mere chance is extremely small.” Not only can music help you be successful later on in life, but it can us young people develop our identity. Jose Abreu started a series of youth orchestras throughout Venezuela, whose collective numbers now eclipse 300,000 children. The big point Abreu made in his TED talk was that music has no class. Anyone from any class, regardless of any preexisting condition, has the ability to make music. It’s not something accessible just to the elite or well-off. Abreu points out how his youth orchestras have helped kids develop their emotions, intellect, personality, responsibility, and ultimately their identity. Music can express feelings pent up in a youth like you or me. No matter what level of music you perform, you must develop a sense of responsibility to show up to practice on time and to have dedicated time to learning your part. Now for the academic numbers: in addition to all the ways music can help a young person’s development, students who study music score better on standardized tests. According to the College Board, college-bound seniors in 2012 scored 31 points higher on the reading and writing portions and 23 points on the math portion of the SAT.

So, by denying our youth the opportunity to experience music in school, whether vocal or instrumental, we deny and ultimately discourage many great attributes and abilities in our children. Music is a universal language, and by cutting music funding, we limit our children’s ability to access this global connection, one that’s easily attainable in our digital world. We lose part of our humanity, part of our ability to heal and relate to other human beings. Finally, we deny them not only higher academic performance, but also developmental opportunities to help them grow as people. Don’t let young people miss out on this opportunity, let them get schooled (in music).

Sources:

·         TED Talks: Eric Whitacre, Robert Gupta, and Jose Abreu

·         “Is Music the Key to Success?” Joanne Lipman, New York Times Sunday Review, published Oct. 12, 2013 (available to look at at this URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/is-music-the-key-to-success.html?_r=0

·         “2012 College-Bound Seniors Total Group Profile Report,” SAT, College Board, Pg. 9 Table 18, accessed from http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf on12/14/13.

·         “The Birth of a Written Musical Language,” David Mann, James Madison University, Pg. 2, accessed from: http://www.jmu.edu/mwa/docs/2011/mann.pdf on 12/14/13