We Can All Make Music.
Ear, ear!
In praise of aural culture
We promote
introducing new songs to singing circles vocally / aurally (un-assisted by
duplicated lyrics and scores). There are
many reasons for this, both practical and philosophical:
The connections developed are direct and un-mediated
The process
embraces those who can't read (either words or music)
It maintains and
maximises eye-to-eye contact (and hence the sense of connection)
It is sensual
learning un-mediated by symbols
It encourages
participants to 'embody' the songs (like the songs from our childhood that we
cannot forget)
It takes advantage
of technology and honours tradition simultaneously (participants are encouraged
to record the songs they like)
It acknowledges
natural learning processes - we all learnt to speak before we learnt to read
It emphasises the
need to listen - an essential and wonderful aspect of singing together
It eliminates the
protective shield (thus maximising engagement)
It allows the
leader to offer the immediate sensation of singing together (rather than
spending time finding the right sheet, reading, preparing, or practicing)
It promotes oral /
aural transmission / learning as a skill worth valorising and maintaining
It promotes memory
(especially 'embodied' memory) as a skill worth valorising and maintaining
It eliminates the
need to copy materials
The call and
response transmission process is immediately engaging and is an active learning
technique.
This means that
most of the songs in our repertoire are quite short and that conducting
techniques include the physicalisation of the tune. Rather than this becoming a limitation,
we’ve found this enhances the group singing experience.
This does not
mean that we are totally against music literacy (that is, the practice of
recording and discovering music through written lyrics and notation). We know that singing leaders often find
written reference material very useful for the purpose of passing-on a song to
their circles, and we provide and use these materials whenever necessary, as
well as the training to help people get the most out of them.
We begin with
aural transmission because we believe (fundamentally) in the innate musicality
of all human beings. This belief has
profound ramifications, not least of which is our belief that music is
“on the same level” as language.
Contemporary linguistic theory affirms the capacity to communicate using
sounds is innate (or to use contemporary jargon, “hard-wired”) and
we believe the same goes for music.
In which case,
the development of musicality is not learnt but un-covered. Just as a child
discovers how to speak, so the capacity to make music is discovered rather than
acquired. Development in this usage
is the exact opposite of envelopment: unwrapping
the potential that is in all of us.
And just as
formal grammatical rules and extended vocabulary can be taught to children who
already understand the essential dynamics of speech, so it is with music. The facility to make music, as is the case
with the facility to speak and to understand speech, comes before the facility to read,
write, or to appreciate the symbolic frameworks we have invented which
encapsulate these innate human qualities.
The
ramifications continue: children are creative with language from the moment
they start using it. So can (and should)
they be with music. Yes, hearing and
learning the stories and songs of one's culture is an essential part of
growing-up, but this should not be at the expense of developing one's own stories and songs.
And there’s
more: children learn language by using language; as much, if not more, by exercising
their own expressiveness as through listening to the intense beauty of those
that have transformed the mundane into the sublime.
But wait! (there’s even
more): the facility to converse develops by making conversation, through
exchange, and by doing it together. So can (and should) it be with
music.
CMV - making a sound world together
©
Community Music Victoria Inc.