(Ana Nitmar, rehearsing for the San Francisco International Arts Festival, taken by Martina Castro)Bottom line, the arts funding streams have gone down by a third, and many organizations are looking to collaborate to stay alive.
Coincidentally, last week I also heard of a local high school principal who, sensing the danger that the arts are in right now, is taking a stand. I have read letters from principals before, but never like this. So I decided to share it in its entirety with you.
Below the letter that Principal Ted Barone of Albany High sent out to his school:
From the Principal's Desk, May 20, 2009: Why We Must Fund Music(photo of Ted Barone, from Albany High Cougar Online Newspaper)
Challenging decisions must be made in these economic times. There is too little money and too many priorities. One choice is whether to fund music programming or refocus our funding priorities to the “core academics” (which happen to be those subjects tested in the statewide testing system).
I propose that we really don’t have a choice. We must fund music.
There are two major groups of reasons why music has to be considered a core subject. One is about culture, tradition, and humanity. The other is about neurological development, learning, and necessary 21st century skill-sets.
From the rhythm of our breathing as infants and the comforting lullabies that helped us sleep, to the cacophony of song and sound that envelopes our modern every day lives, music is an essential factor in what defines us as a humanity. Music is a messenger that carries the history and collective experience of a people across time and space. Whether it’s the double reed tones of the Zummarra, an oboe like instrument, evoking the pulsating images and pungent smells of the caravans crossing the North African desert, or the flamenco with its passionate roots in Indian, Arabic and gypsy traditions, music reminds us of who we are. It is beautiful, inspiring, community building, and deeply satisfying.
Music also helps develop our brains in a way that will increase our ability to address and solve the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead of us as a people. I have long had a fascination with the neurology of learning and recently read a remarkable book that links neurological development with music, Daniel Levitan’s This is Your Brain on Music.*
I was particularly interested in Levitan’s discussion of the neural connections made when learning to play music. The musical key is the proverbial key. In other words, the structure and organization of music is exactly what makes it so important for brain development. There are only twelve pitches in Western music, but music is really about the combinations, variations and organization of those dozen tones. From the notes, chords are built. Chords determine keys, within which a skillful musician creates an experience, a message, a movement. Mix in rhythm and a new order of time emerges.
Music is all about creating neural networks and expanding the speed and capacity of the pathways that determine skill and memory. A key finding from brain research is that once a neural pathway is established, and the more that pathway is used, especially with passion and emotion, the greater the ‘bandwidth’ and strength of the connection. Memory is improved, processing speed is increased, and better, more sophisticated decisions are a result.
Playing music draws upon the multiple intelligences** while building capacity in each. Obviously, the musical intelligence is predominant, but musicians develop the kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and logical-mathematical intelligences as they nurture an expertise with practice, play, and performance. These developed intelligences carry over into all disciplines that require a complexity of thought, including math, the sciences, and the humanities.
Music requires bringing together a diversity of elements to form wholes that are qualitatively different from any of the individual elements. As Levitan describes, the brain is like a parallel processing machine with a lot of activity going on simultaneously but only one performance point. Developing the neural connections required to play complex music requires tremendous discipline, hours upon hours of practice, and a passion to sustain the interest that makes all of that practice worthwhile.
Music is organized, like all knowledge, into distinct structures and categories, such as chords, keys, genres, tempos, rhythm and musical eras. Music is all about the structural connections that are used to support memory. It’s much easier to remember something that follows a familiar structure or pattern than something random and unfamiliar. These familiar structures serve as the foundation for building greater knowledge and even stronger and more extensive neural networks that support learning of all kinds.***
In a world of extraordinary complexity, a premium is placed on one’s ability to quickly process massive amounts of wildly varying types of information. Musical instruction helps young people develop the brain capacity to process a lot of information and to organize and present information in a more easily understood fashion.****
Music is certainly worthy of study and celebration all on its own just because of the way it makes one feel. In addition, playing music cultivates a mind that is prepared to process and make sense of the rush of information and problems that have come to characterize the 21st century. Music is a core subject. We can’t cut funding for music any more than we can cut funding for math.
References:
*Levitin, Daniel This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession Plume/Penguin 2007 New York
**Gardner, David Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences Basic Books 1983 New York
***Sousa, David How the Brain Learns: A Classroom Teacher's Guide Corwin Press 2001 Thousand Oaks
****Another book that addresses these issues in an entertaining manner: Sacks, Oliver Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain Vintage Books 2008 New York
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