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I love indie and reggae music, but good stuff outside of the mainstream has been hard to find. Until now. Amazon.com has a bunch of samplers from indie labels of mostly unknown artists for FREE. I'm in the process of downloading probably close to a gig of music right now and paying NOTHING. YAY!!! Yeah, I know, shameless plug for amazon, but they give me free music, so I figured I'd pass on the joy. Look it up, people! :-)
Since the development of the Mozart Theory back in the early 1990’s (Rogers, Part 2), high school music programs have been thrown into the spotlight of debate. Continuing budget cuts for public high schools have created a dilemma on the part of administration: how to spread the money to keep the educational standards high enough that graduates will have every chance of success? According to Nicolas Johnson, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 36 states so far have proposed or enacted severe cuts, numbering in the billions of dollars per state, to educational funding for public schools from kindergarten through secondary school (Johnson). One area that has seen significant value debate has been music education. One high school vocal music and music theory teacher was told that, after a survey of area schools, his program was considered “fluff” (Subik). School districts across the country have been largely downsizing or entirely eliminating their music education programs for various reasons.
First of all, some feel that music education takes up time that could be used for other, more academically stimulating electives that would better prepare students to begin their intended college majors. Studies show, however, that after listening to Mozart for only 10 minutes, college students showed a remarkable improvement in nonverbal reasoning on a standardized test over those who listened to meditative sounds or nothing. This developed into a theory known as the Mozart Effect. More recent studies of that same theory have shown that learning to read and play music, whether vocally or instrumentally, improves verbal memory while simple exposure to music increases the production of certain proteins in the brain that prevent neuronic death and improve the ability to learn positive behaviors. This is especially evident in young children and can build strong nerve pathways in the brain, but if the child should lose interest or stop being encouraged or have access to participation in music, those neural pathways will begin to break down (Rogers, Part 2). In other words, “use it or lose it” (Rogers, Part 2).
“Whether we are seeking ways to build brain connections in young children or ways to prevent at-risk students from dropping out, music makes a difference. Earlier research showed that music students consistently scored higher than their counterparts on the SAT, but nobody really knew whether that was because the brightest students gravitated toward music or because music was making kids smarter. A more recent study in which students who studied piano or voice for nine months were compared to peers without musical training showed gains in IQ scores for those who took music lessons” (Schmidt).
This benefit to the cognitive development of students is why it is extremely important that music education programs not be cut from high school curriculums.
Unfortunately, some people are concerned that if a student chooses to take music education in high school, they may be psychologically hampered by insecurity if they consider their talent inferior to that of another student. They are also concerned that the insecurity would subsequently challenge the student’s self-confidence when it comes to the rest of their education. Representatives from the Vh1 Save The Music Foundation studied students across the nation and discovered this:
“As we examined the music education system throughout the nation, we found that music education is not only important for its intrinsic value, but research consistently demonstrated that students who study an instrument enhance their critical thinking skills and their ability to work together as a team. They are more engaged in school and less likely to drop out; and they do significantly better in all of their academic endeavors” (About Vh1 Save The Music Foundation).
Another advocate of music education is the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. In a recent speech, he said,
“It’s so important to me that we give our students a reason to be excited about coming to school every day, to be passionate. We have to dramatically drive down our dropout rates in this country. We lose 30% of our young people before they graduate from high school. They have no options in today’s economy. None. For me it was sports. For other students, it’s dance, or drama, or music, or band, or chess, or debate, or yearbook, or all those things that are seen as “extras” or extracurriculars—those are actually the heart of giving our students a reason to get up and go to school every day and to be excited.
The only way that happens is if our children have exposure to a broad range of activities, and music is a huge, huge piece of that” (Duncan).
The beauty of music education courses being electives is that, if a student truly dislikes music, they have the option not to take it. There is no reason for any student to feel threatened or insecure because of the superior talent of any other student. Choirs and bands are made to sound good because of the sum of their parts, not from the talent of any individual student. If a student truly loves music, their self-esteem will not be hinged on whether or not they sound like a professional, but that they are doing their part to make the entire ensemble sound as it should. Students in Brooklyn, New York, have become so involved in the family that musical ensembles often become that when their music program was severely cut, they and their parents gathered on the streets to protest (Monahan). Upon hearing of budget cuts to happen in Johnstown, New York, students and teachers alike shed tears as advocates of the music program formally protested (Subik).
The most often cited reason for the insignificance of high school music programs is that they fail to have impact on students’ intended college majors. Many people feel that music is unimportant academically because it does not obviously incorporate mathematic, scientific, or linguistic application or development into the subject matter. Luckily for music students, the people that feel that way are mistaken. Mathematics is a subject very intimately woven into music, so much so that if it were taken away, modern musical notation would not exist. Musical notation consists of a series of notes that are based upon numeric values and fractions of numeric values that add together to create a certain whole number in a somewhat complex system of measuring beats per section, or measure, and which fractional note gets the emphasis. Measuring beats per minute is another way mathematics is integrated with music. Science is another subject not easily seen to be related to music even though it is so intimately related that modern musical instruments and vocal techniques would not exist without scientific study and developments. The flute, for example, has a very unique sound that is created by the action of wind, (the breath of the flautist), over a hole that creates vibrations contained by the body of the instrument and allowed to escape at certain intervals in the body by holes covered by felt and metal dampers, thus creating higher and lower sounds depending on which damper is lifted (“flute”). Music and linguistics are, again, very intimately linked in various manners. The texts of many operas, musicals, and many single vocal or choral pieces are based off of or directly taken from classical literature and poetry. A huge number of musical pieces with vocal parts are in different languages, enabling those studying foreign languages, especially those based off of Latin, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, to practice pronunciation and fluency. Music and language are tied together in a much more complicated way as well: neurologically. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “music and language are stored in separate parts of the brain but utilize the same neural resources and neural networks for the processing of complex information. This organization, which so far has been supported by the results of several studies, enables rapid processing of information” (Rogers, Part 1). People that suffer from aphasia (speech confusion associated with a stroke or brain tumor) can regain some speech ability by being taught to sing the words they want to say, a form of therapy known as Melodic Intonation where words are associated with musical pitch. This therapy actually rebuilds the lobe in the patient’s brain associated with speech. “[This] ability of the brain to shift speech representation to an adjacent region through the formation of neural connections based on music (Rogers, Part 1)” is solid proof that music is a very important part of the progression of a student’s linguistic skills and can definitely aid their academic development.
Music education is an important part of the high school education process. It is indeed beneficial to the students’ personal and academic growth and success, as shown by scientific research. The United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, says that he is “...absolutely convinced that if more students had that kind of exposure, test scores would go up, and much more importantly, graduation rates would go up, students would feel better about themselves, and long term, their success in life would be dramatically better because they had those basic opportunities” (Duncan). The budget cuts occurring in high school music education programs are hampering students’ opportunities for success. People, parents especially, need to become more aware of the budgeting changes at their area high schools and take any opportunity offered to protest the short-changing of the importance of music education programs. The success of generations of students to come depends on it.
This is just the paper I was writing for my English prof...enjoy if you wish...
Opera- Lost in Translation?
Many believe opera to be either a guilty pleasure or a lost art. “I would not be caught dead listening to that!” is an exclamation I have heard time and time again over the years, even from fellow vocalists. The few friends I possess that do enjoy opera consider it “too ‘geeky’ to admit” that they listen to it. What would surprise parties from either side of the spectrum is that opera has infiltrated popular culture in a way popular music has yet to aspire to.
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, opera has shown up in everything from cartoons and movies to television commercials for everyday items like toothpaste, laundry detergent and diapers. In fact, Aqua-fresh uses Ponchielli’s “La gioconda,” Cheer detergent features Rossini’s “Le nozze di Figaro,” and Pampers diapers toddle along to another Rossini piece; “La gazza ladra.” Avid movie-watchers have the unfortunate tendency to forget that a lot of their favorite films would be devoid of emotion were it not for the soundtracks; many of which contain operatic works. For example, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Castaway both feature Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” while Toy Story 2, Match Point, Armageddon and Twister all utilize Rossini’s “William Tell.” “The Lone Ranger's theme music is perhaps that most famous use of an opera. In fact, upon hearing Rossini's “William Tell” overture, most people think it originated as a TV theme song, rather than as a classical opera” (National Endowment for the Arts).
Opera is not contained to being merely background music, either. Many television shows used opera pieces as primary plot lines, including Frasier, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, The West Wing, and Seinfeld. The Looney Tunes, The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and Veggie Tales have all used operatic pieces as major plot lines as well. The writers of Sesame Street have even go so far as to base a character (Placido Flamingo--a pink bird) on an opera singer named Placido Domingo along with featuring many opera singers on the show as themselves, such as Luciano Pavarotti, a world-famous vocalist.
Italian is widely considered the language of opera, but in reality, opera comes in many languages, including German, Russian, English, Spanish, French, Hungarian and Polish. This has made it more accessible throughout the world to a variety of audiences.
Operatic works are not confined to ages past, either. Many movies and stage works in the modern era have had operas written specifically for them. John Williams, the composer of countless movie scores, has written operas primarily for use in various movies, including Star Wars and the Harry Potter movies. They’ve also been used as theme music for various video games; some have independent stories, some are based on movies, but many video game soundtracks have either been heavily influenced or directly taken from opera. Originally, this was because classical music was public property, so entertainment companies were spared the expense of hiring a composer or paying for the music copyrights.
Opera was first introduced to the world of entertainment at the end of the 16th century by Jacopo Peri’s opera Dafne, which was unfortunately lost. It spread throughout Europe during the 17th century, but by the 18th, Europe was dominated by Italian opera. It continued to evolve through the 19th and 20th centuries into a few chief formats: “reform” operas, opera seria (serious operas), comic operas (such as The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute), and the bel canto style (fast, high notes). These works of Italian composers are chiefly those that come to mind when most people think of opera. They have endured time and the development of different musical cultures throughout the world because of the universality of their themes and the way that music reaches the heart.
The best way of describing the emotion of opera that I have found is a quote from Red in The Shawshank Redemption: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”
Opera deals with universal themes like love, loss, courage, cowardice, tyranny and selflessness. Whether or not the listener can understand what is being sung, when a production is watched and not simply listened to, the actor-singers communicate the emotions through their actions and facial expressions. Often, as I have experienced as I studied and performed opera, the emotion that the vocalist infuses their singing with is enough to get the message across to the audience.
John Ruskin (publication unknown) said “Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart go together.” As evidenced by the power of “invasion” that has been opera’s influence on popular media, I would consider opera to be a fine art indeed, rather than a lost one.
Works Cited
"National Initiatives: Great American Voices Military Base Tour - Opera is All Around You!" National Endowment for the Arts. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 July 2009.
"Opera." Wikipedia. N.p., 08 July 2009. Web. 08 July 2009. .
The Shawshank Redemption. By Stephen King. Screenplay by Frank Darabont. Perf. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994. DVD.
Life is a crazy weird trip. Sometimes you just have to step out and take a stand against something. For me, that something is apathy. I’ve been in complete warfare mode against it for as long as I can remember, within myself and people I come in contact with. People were created to be passionate creatures. My passion? Music.
A recent scientific study revealed that a sense of music and beat is inherent in everyone from birth onward. The study monitored the brains of 3-4 day old infants when exposed to a rock beat that was consistent. After a few times through listening to it, they began removing every fourth beat. When the infants’ brains registered this, they literally “twitched.” Music is inherent- separate from language or circumstances. For all those Darwin supporters out there, chew on this: the concept of steady beat is isolated to humans. Monkeys, lab rats, goldfish, dogs- none of them have it. Just thinking about it really encouraged me because of how unique we are as humans. Some scientists try and throw us into these boxes as a species and classify away the wonder we should have at God’s creation, for we are made in His image. I was just reading last night in Psalm 139, and verse 14 really caught my attention because of how much of my life I’ve spent dealing with insecurity:
“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.”
My sister Kara once told me “Tami, God does NOT make junk.” To this day, I can barely say that aloud without tearing up. For me, to say that is to state very clearly whom I belong to; the thought alone makes me tear up in sheer awe of the care that went into fashioning every part of me- even the parts I don’t like. Infinite love created every bit of who I am, and placed into me the one element that reaches into every human being at the deepest, most vulnerable levels: music.
It seems to be one element that can break through every wall that we as humans erect around our hearts in order to keep the rest of humanity out and prevent ourselves from the inevitable: pain. When I lived in the dorms, I’d have my music fairly loud and every once in awhile someone would pass my door and pause briefly to catch a few bars of whatever song happened to be playing. Some sighed, some quickened their pace, and still others popped their head in to give me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. People that I had never before had a connection with or had any reason to have a connection with were suddenly on a very personal level with me. It was almost as if my personal walls had never existed in the first place. THAT is the power of music. Or, rather, the power of God exhibited through music.
Certain songs catch me so completely unawares that I forget to breathe as I strain to capture every note, every nuance of the sound. Colors explode in my mind as emotions collide within my imagination and a mental picture forms. That image is what I will forever associate that piece of music with. Still other songs are too overwhelming for me to capture the mental picture right away and I’m forced to get out pastel and paper and draw as I listen to the song repeatedly until the image forms under my fingertips. I’m never satisfied until every possible color has been exhausted and I am often surprised by the picture revealed when I finally look down at what the music “looked like” to my mind, or, if you will, to my heart.
I am convinced that every individual has one particular instrument that pierces them to the core when played masterfully. We all have memories attached to music; favorite movies, a song played in a restaurant when hanging out with friends, a song sung at a wedding or a funeral, and the albums our parents listened to when we were growing up. I think the worst crime committed by the world of popular music is overplaying a song that tops the charts. Sure, the general populace enjoys it, but does that entitle it to copious amounts of airtime? The correct answer is no, by the way. All that is accomplished is that the “self-destruct” button on the tune is pushed. After that, the only song played should be “Taps.”
Tangents appear to be my specialty, but I’m sure by now the topic of this tome, “passion,” has been clearly portrayed by my unchecked enthusiasm toward the subject of music. I may shy away from politics, large groups of women, and onions, but when it comes to music, be prepared for the long haul. It’s all I can muster to shut myself up sometimes.
Recently I discovered something that I find very interesting about the way I view music. I went through a “punk” stage when I graduated from high school; loud music, dark clothing and the attitude to go with it. The volume on my iPod got turned louder and louder, and the earbuds were rarely further from my ears than the distance from my head to my backpack. It wasn’t that I was trying to prove anything to anyone. On the contrary, I was trying to hide from being noticed in the first place. I was just another punk kid with loud music. Voila! I got left alone.
Honestly, I’m extremely relived that I pretty much grew out of it. I faced my emotional issues, got help for my health issues and finally turned back to the only One who could heal my spiritual issues. There’s still that part of me that enjoys punk rock and at this point, I highly doubt I’ll ever stop wearing chucks, but we’ll see where I’m at ten years from now. What I love about the place I’m in right now is that I know where I stand with my Heavenly Father, regardless of whether or not my earthly one is on board with what I think He wants for my life. Knowing where I stand with (or should I say IN) the Father opens up a whole different lifestyle and manner of thinking for me. I am finally fine with being exactly who and what God made me, and I’m enjoying the sweetest, most intimate relationship with my Lord that I’ve ever had. All through His grace and mercy, too. The Lord knows I don’t deserve it. Another beautiful thing about this transformation is the new avenues of musical tastes, interests and opportunities that it has opened up for me. To be continued...
