Posts Tagged ‘Education’
It has been happening for a while now. Studying the arts whether fine or performing has been deemphasized. Schools have been cutting funding for their arts programs along with the state governments cutting back on funding the arts. Does anyone realize what this action is doing to education in the long run?
Having a background in the performing arts, in particular, has its benefits that really only come out later in life. Studying music does several things to a human being. It improves their ability to analyze, it improves connections in the brain which does wonders for motor coordination. As an academic piece, it may seem senseless to study the different periods of music such as Renaissance, Classical, and Baroque, but the lessons learned in identifying music whether by genre or artist will be remembered throughout life unlike other things we learn in school and forget because their not practical in real life.
Even though higher powers that control what we learn have decided to reduce our exposure to the arts. We need to find ways outside of school education to make it know that an arts background is vital to life. Whether it be going to a local concert or show, there is something in live music and other performing arts that rewires our brains to do things that we are not aware are possible.
If we look at music groups that are offered over the course of a life time, one will find that there are youth choirs, high school choirs, college choirs and…. adult choirs. Notice, the hesitation between college choirs and adult choirs. Most adult choirs consist of singers who are middle aged. Very few members are young adults just out of college and vivacious. There is a whole gap that could be filled with young adults that would be thrilled to be able to continue in choir.
A choir consisting of young adults needs to be established several reasons. Of course, the first reason is for the musical benefit. But, there are other reasons too. Generally speaking, musicians are their own breed of artist and have very unique personalities. Musicians and choristers, especially, tend to cling to their own kind. The problem at hand is that there are very few outlets for this group of individuals to turn to after college to find others similar to them. The last thing that a young adult choir would help to fulfill is the education factor. Since the members of the choir would consist of young families, having their parents in a choir would teach by example the importance of music and the arts in their lives.
Musicians definitely have their own social network and having a choir of young musicians would help build a very needed networking portal that is critical to the young adult just out of school. Musicians all know their is a secret fraternity among themselves. If there is something you need, guaranteed someone, whether an instrumentalist or vocalist, knows someone. Hence, word-of-mouth advertising goes along way in the music world. To say it succinctly, musicians all have people that know people and young musicians need to get to know more people like them.
Educationally, we can never learn enough about music. That is part of the fun of learning music. Whether we’ve never heard a piece or heard it hundreds of times, there is always something new that can be learned from the same piece. That concept is what needs to be taught informally to our young children and they will learn that lesson quickly through observation from their parents and other grown-ups. Therefore, a choir of young adults, would not only serve the young adult community, but would also create a community among the children of the members.
There are many more reasons that I can think a young adult choir would be beneficial to the society and I’ve only named a few. Hopefully, there are others who feel the same way, but have just never thought it out and noticed the void needed filling. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but together those of us who feel this way could bring musical solutions to the world.