Music Ed 101

“Can we watch a Stevie Wonder video again, Mom?  Can we, can we?”

I love that kid.

And clearly we’re doing something right because she has excellent musical taste!  I started the musical indoctrination early. Anna’s nighty-night mix includes the following:

•  Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles 
•  Your Song – Elton John
•  Just the Way You Are – Billy Joel
•  My Cherie Amour – Stevie Wonder
•  Peaceful, Easy Feeling – The Eagles
•  Blessed – Elton John
•  Ventura Highway – America
•  Is This Love – Bob Marley & The Wailers
•  Over My Head – Fleetwood Mac
•  You Are the Sunshine of My Life – Stevie Wonder

      And that's only a portion of the list; there are over 20 songs. I’ve been singing many of these songs to Anna at night since she was a newborn, while rocking or dancing her to sleep.  We started mostly with classical, and then some jazz – Ella Fitzgerald singing “Cheek to Cheek" and Miles Davis playing “Bye Bye Blackbird” were early favorites.  But when our bedtime ritual became longer and longer, I thought some soothing and mellow classic rock/pop songs would be appropriate.  Thus, this playlist was born.

Sleepy dancing, summer 2009

Just like Brenda, who recently wrote our guest post about family literacy, couldn’t imagine a home without books (nor could I), I couldn’t imagine a home without music. I feel grateful to my parents for exposing me to a wonderful variety of music at home from an early age – Motown, classical, rock/pop, R&B, country, you name it.  Even now I can name a handful of songs that I like in every genre.

My early favorites included The Beatles, Kenny Rogers, Eddie Rabbit, Michael Jackson, The Eagles, etc.  My dad would play Beatles songs on the piano and I would be Paul, strumming along lefty (even though I’m not) with my toy guitar. I also loved hearing my mom play the piano (“pee-no,” as Anna would say), which she does for a living, and found myself listening to a lot of classical music as a young child.  Chopin was, and still is, my favorite classical composer.

But we took things one step further.  My mom had a set of Time Life records (yes, records, I’m that old) that were sort of a survey of classical music and they came with a booklet with short biographies of each composer. I was fascinated by them and read them all as a young child.  Nerdy?  Yes, but in a good way. I learned a lot and cultivated a love of all sorts of music.

Anna is curious too. She has recently started asking who sings these songs that we listen to all the time.  She recognizes them if she hears them on the radio.  To date, Stevie Wonder is, hands down, her favorite.  She LOVES “My Cherie Amour” and now sings along with me at night. 

But she’s impressed me by going one step further – we usually look up animals with the iPad at night (and sometimes favorite cartoon characters too), but the other night, she wanted to see a video of Stevie Wonder. So we did some searching on You Tube and found some awesome live performances, and one Sesame Street appearance with Grover. 

“He has on sunglasses!” she exclaimed. And I explained why, and she was appropriately impressed that this man who can’t see the piano he plays is so incredibly talented.  Then Anna said she wanted to see him and his other friend with the sunglasses, and pointed to a video duet of Stevie and Ray Charles. She loved it.  How cool is that?

The other day on the way home from day care, Anna asked if Stevie Wonder was a stranger (since we’ve been talking about that lately). I told her that since we haven't met him, I guess he was, but I doubted we would ever meet him because he’s famous. But I also told her I assume that he's a nice guy. Because I’ve instructed her to ask me before talking to any strangers, she said, “Can I talk to him?” 

I laughed.  I replied, “Honey, if you ever actually meet Stevie Wonder, of course you can talk to him. Because I’ll be right there with you!”

Rock star in the living room! (And no, she hadn't seen any Stevie Wonder performances at this point.)

I love it that Anna is following in my footsteps and showing an early, sincere interest in music – the songs, the artists themselves, everything.  Music education is so important.  For some reason I still don’t understand, unlike sports programs, music and art programs generally tend to find themselves on the chopping block before anything else when it comes to school budget cuts. That is a travesty.

Part of being a well-rounded person is having a breadth of interests and knowledge.  Music evokes emotion like nothing else and it brings people together.  I remember seeing a sign in the choir room as a child that read, “Music is the language of the soul.”  It really is.

So regardless of what your school does when it comes to the arts, teach your kids about music at home.  It’s fun, it’s a great way to spend time together, and it can make an impression on your child that lasts a lifetime.

Singing and laughing in the car, early 2011