Appropriately enough, I watched the movie August Rush this week. It has a sappy, predictable plot but the young star in the movie, August Rush, is an absolute music prodigy! Both of August’s parents are professional musicians – his mother a famous cellist, and father a singer/guitarist of a rock band. August is brought up in an orphanage with no knowledge of his parents and his parents don’t know about him. However, he hears music all around him – in nature, in machines, in the sky – and believes that it is his parents communicating with him. This leads August to run away, at the age of 10, to New York City where he astonishes everyone he meets with his natural ability to pick up an instrument, play it, and compose brilliant music. August is finally adopted in Julliard and his symphony is chosen to be featured in a concert in Central Park. This is where the music unites him and his parents for the first time.
As I watched this movie, several thoughts and questions were racing through my mind regarding the readings. First, are a person’s musical skills determined by nature or nurture? In a workshop, the speaker asked us to consider “who I am and where I am in life.” Then he asked us to determine how much of that was affected by: nature (my genes), nurture (my upbringing), random life events, and free will. Then attribute a percentage to each – almost like a pie chart of yourself. It’s amazing how some people give total credit to themselves (freewill), while others gave more credit to nurture. But what August? Raised without his musical virtuoso parents, he seemed to acquire his musical genius through nature. As if these skills were natural inherent, passed down genetically.
However, was August not only a music prodigy, but also a scientific genius? “What artists and scientists have in common is the ability to live in an open-ended state of interpretation and re-interpretation of the products of our work” (Levitin, 2006). He clearly experimented with everything music instruments he could get his hands on, he tried different sounds on different objects … the more he experimented the more he was able to piece together the music all around him into something he could interpret to everyone else. This is like the universal truth that artists strive for: “not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies, and cultures change.” (p.5) August wanted more than make money playing on street corners, he wanted more than Julliard accolades, or featured symphonies. He wanted to be found. He wanted his music to reach people and convey emotion; he wanted to connect to his parents. In a way, music is a language of connection and every human’s brain is tuned to it some way or another. Thus, music can teach us not only about the brain, but it also has a connection to the heart.
Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes
Another connection to music cognition is the link between babies and music. I found some of the research quite interesting on the website: http://www.greenwych.ca/2001-2.htm . I taught a Baby Story Time for 4 years and recognized the importance of not only music for babies, but also rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. While researching for the best songs and nursery rhymes to use I found heaps of research about the benefits of exposing babies to these particular sounds. These story times provide socialization and stimulation that assist in the development of language and physical skills. However, it was not until I actually saw my babies from story time years later still able to recite fingerplays and sing-a-long to simple songs that I realized it all actually sank into their brains! It takes practice and experimentation, but there are a few tricks that are golden for baby story times, such as: singing nursery rhymes twice (repetition!), using hand gestures and movement, sing many short songs and rhymes, use instruments and experiment with noise (babies love the sound of keys!), let babies and parents take part by using a shaker or jingle bell to keep beat during songs … and no matter how sick YOU get of singing the same songs over and over again … it’s worth it in the long run for the babies!
As evidenced from the movie August Rush and (since I went ahead in the reading) in chapter 8 of This is Your Brain on Music, exposure to music is crucial to children’s cognitive learning process. Whether the rhythm and rhyme is infused in their brains while in the womb or through actual exposure as an infant – many studies have examined the significant effects of music on the brain. There is always the flip side … what about children who are exposed to no music? Where are all the studies on this? It sounds like a torturous existence, but how are the minds of young people who grow up with no music around them? Also, is force-feeding babies classical music, and other auditory stimulations, really make a child genius, or just simply happy? Does it affect intellect or emotion more? These are not only important questions for scientists and researchers, but also for librarians who expose children to music and choose the music for the library's collections.
Interesting Links:
Articles about music and infants:
http://books.google.com/books?id=S6gEU8z6ftcC
Advances in Infancy Research, Volume 12
By Lewis Paeff Lipsitt, Carolyn Rovee-Collier, Harlene Hayne
Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999
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