Commentary: Music Learning and Teaching in Infancy and Early Childhood

Author(s):  
Margaret S. Barrett

This article, which presents an overview by exploring the characteristic features of a range of musical beginnings and the possibilities for learning that are evidenced, demonstrates that much of young children's early music-making is improvised in the moment as a means to communicate with others and self. Such communications, from responses and exchanges in “motherese” or “parentese” to young children's independent invented song-making, may be regarded as the first “oral tradition.” Oral traditions draw on the power of repetition and the human urge to generate and create. Their musical outputs feature elaboration and ideational fluency as well as the acknowledgment of the musical cultures from which the tradition arises.

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 53-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Amborn

For current discourse in the southwest Ethiopian hill farming populations of the Burji, Konso, and D'iraaša, the present time constitutes a spatiotemporal system of coordinates in which modern attitudes to the past and tradition intersect or are knotted with group “memories.”What do we mean by memory? Who remembers? And how? The word “memory” is used here to refer to the common memory of a local group of people, in other words the cultural processing of memory.In the course of time such memories have manifested themselves in different ways. This paper examines why certain events are remembered and how their transmission is expressed. Linked to this is the question of the meaning (Sinngehalt) of memory. The question of the relationship between memory and so-called real historical events is thus only secondary. Three types of possible approach are discussed in this paper: mythical time, referring to mytho-historical traditions of origin; cyclical time, as seen in the Gada system (generation grading system); and linear time, as shown in the genealogical lines of specific lineages.In their traditions, all three population groups refer to a common original settlement area in Liban, to the east of the areas they occupy today. References to Liban, with varying geographical locations, are also found in the oral traditions of many Oromo-speaking groups. Oromo nationalists claim Liban as the common original home of all Oromo. In this paper, however, Oromo-speaking groups are not discussed, since we are mainly concerned with the Burji, Konso, and D'iraaša, for whom, according to their Liban traditions, the exodus was the moment of their separation from the Oromo-speaking Borana, who lived in Liban together with them up to that point.


Author(s):  
Margaret S. Barrett ◽  
Johannella Tafuri

Well before the infant can grasp the materials of art-making in order to make an original impression, he/she has been engaged in creative music-making for some considerable time. What do we know of this early creativity in music? How is it manifested? What are its characteristic features and forms? What role does this early activity play in children's development? How might children's early creative work be supported and extended? As teachers and early childhood educators, how might we draw on this rich resource of music engagement in developing further children's musical understanding and skills? This article explores these questions by focusing on the creative meaning-making of children from birth to early schooling (age 0–5 years). It examines the ways young children engage in creative music activity in family and community settings, individually, socially, institutionally, and culturally, and considers the implications of this engagement for their music learning.


Author(s):  
Eve Harwood ◽  
Kathryn Marsh

This article focuses on children's musical play, including that involving interactions with popular music and popular culture. It outlines features of musical play, especially as found in communities of practice in the playground, and the disjunction that may often occur between children's challenging, social, and participatory enactment of play and the pedagogical characteristics of classroom music. The article suggests a child-centered approach to music learning and teaching that endeavors to bridge the gap between children's external, informal music-making and musical experiences in the school.


Author(s):  
Roger Mantie

Charles Keil enjoyed a long and illustrious self-styled career as an activist, musician, educator, and “applied sociomusicologist.” His many investigations included urban blues music, the Tiv people of Africa, polka musicians in Buffalo, and Balkan musicians in Greece. His work has focused on groove and participation, as a response to what he sees as a corrupt and overrationalized Western culture. In this unconventional “open letter” format, the author explores the richness of Keil’s life and work, encouraged by his call for vibrant, vernacular, participatory, nonmediated musics that nurture spontaneity, and by his call for music learning inspired by paideia and groove. The chapter finds excitement in the implications Keil’s practice might hold for music learning and teaching, participatory music making, and for conceptualizing all education as “leisure education.”


ALAYASASTRA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Ery Agus Kurnianto

The focus of the problem in this study is the values of local wisdom within two oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok of Komering Tribe, South Sumatra. This study aimed to identify and to describe elements of local wisdom within those oral traditions. In addition, this study was established as a real effort to explore, to inventorize, and to document the oral traditions of Komering society. A descriptive method was applied in this study. The data were analyzed by applying qualitative approach on ethnographic elements to demonstrate and explain the value of local wisdom within those oral traditions. The theory applied in this study were oral literature and local wisdom. The conclusion from the analysis proved that there was a concept of social relations among individuals, among individuals and society, among social groups, and among individuals and their God. The value of local wisdom that had been identified were: 1) belief in God, 2) deliberation, 3) responsibility and 4) helping each other. The actualization of the value of local wisdom within the oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok was in form of behaving in ways that help each other, solving problems by means of deliberation and responsibility. Keywords: Oral tradition, warah-warah, ringgok-ringgok, local wisdom values.


Author(s):  
Ashok G. Naikar ◽  
Ganapathi Rao ◽  
Panchal Vinayak J.

Indian medical heritage flows in two distinctive but mutually complimenting streams. The oral tradition being followed by millions of housewives and thousands of local health practitioners is the practical aspect of codified streams such as Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani. These oral traditions are head based and take care of the basic health needs of the people using immediately available local resources. Majority of these are plant based remedies, supplemented by animal and mineral products. Many of the practices followed by these local streams can be understood and evaluated by the codified stream such as Ayurveda. These streams are not static, historical scrutiny of their evolution shows the enriching phenomena at all times. Thus we have more than 7000 species of higher and lower plants and hundreds of minerals and animal product used in local health tradition to manage hundreds of disease conditions. A pertinent question that arises here is that in which basis these systems got enriched. Is it just trial error method over a point of time which gave rise to this rich tradition, is it an intuitive knowledge born out of close association with nature. One of the reasons for this attitude can be, that one is always made to believe that the science means that which can be explained by western models of logic and epistemology. The world view being developed and adopted by the dominant western scientific paradigm never fits in to the world view being followed and practiced by the indigenous traditions. This is well accepted by us due to the last 200 yrs of political and cultural domination by western and other alien forces.


Author(s):  
Evan S. Tobias

Contemporary society is rich with diverse musics and musical practices, many of which are supported or shared via digital and social media. Music educators might address such forms of musical engagement to diversify what occurs in music programs. Realizing the possibilities of social media and addressing issues that might be problematic for music learning and teaching calls for conceptualizing social media in a more expansive manner than focusing on the technology itself. Situating people’s social media use and musical engagement in a larger context of participatory culture that involves music and media may be fruitful in this regard. We might then consider the potential of social media and musical engagement in participatory cultures for music learning and teaching. This chapter offers an overview of how people are applying aspects of participatory culture and social media in educational contexts. Building on work in media studies, media arts, education, and curricular theory, the chapter develops a framework for translating and recontextualizing participatory culture, musical engagement, and social media in ways that might inform music pedagogy and curriculum. In this way, it may help music educators move from an awareness of how people engage with and through music and social media in participatory culture to an orientation of developing related praxis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Sandra E. Trehub

Abstract I review two recent books on music, both inspired by cognitive neuroscience but differing in most other respects. Isabelle Peretz, an expert in the cognitive neuroscience of music, describes how we perceive and produce music, as reflected in neural and behavioral responsiveness. Her book is intended for general readers who are interested in music and curious about the science behind our musical nature—brains that are prepared for music and changed by active musical engagement. Lynn Helding, an expert in vocal performance and pedagogy, draws on findings from psychology and neuroscience to inform her approach to music learning and teaching. Aimed at musicians, aspiring musicians, and those who teach them, her book focuses largely on the means of optimizing learning and skilled performance.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Creech ◽  
Susan Hallam

This paper considers the literature that may inform our understanding of parent–teacher–pupil interactions in instrumental music. It draws on research directly concerned with instrumental music learning and that from the wider psychological, sociological and educational literature concerned with conceptions of effective learning and teaching; conceptions of effective parenting; and dimensions of interpersonal relationships. Finally, a systemic, dynamic model is proposed which may serve to guide future research in the field.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Malloch ◽  
Jonathan Delafield-Butt ◽  
Colwyn Trevarthen

Human learning is inspired with the purposes and feelings of individuals who seek conscious, in-the-moment cooperation. It is social and co-created through mutual attunement of the movements of body and mind. In school, the interested learner needs to be encouraged by a skilled teacher sensitive to the rhythms of the child’s friendly, open vitality. They co-create shared projects in play, with movement and language, developing meaning and learning in sympathetic collaboration. From infancy, projects of imagination are expressed by the body and voice with the creative forms of 'communicative musicality' – gestural narratives created in rhythms of movement, felt, seen and heard. They anticipate being responded to with love and care. Learning within these embodied narratives incorporates affective, energetic, and intentional components to produce schemas of engagement that structure knowledge, and become meaningful habits held in memory. The rituals of culture and technical skills develop from the psycho-motor structure of human nature, with its vital impulses of thought-in-action that express an integrated, imaginative, and sociable Self.


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