The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

This week, we watched a short video about some students in Paraguay who have created an orchestra using instruments made from garbage in the landfill on which their community is built.  In the video, one person mentions that instruments are worth as much as homes in their community, so having instruments is a huge blessing to the people.

In the video, one girl says that listening to the sounds of her violin makes butterflies in her stomach.  She is so excited to experience music, and she is obviously thrilled that she can play music on a good-quality sounding instrument.  It seems clear that she would not have music in her life without her instrument, and she knows the gift it is that she can experience it, even with an instrument that Americans would consider garbage.  Another girl says that her life would be meaningless without music.  It is wonderful to think that she can find her passion because of a recycled instrument.  Music is obviously valuable in people’s lives if they are willing to go through the effort to create their own instruments from trash.  I imagine that obtaining the kind of tuning and acoustics that they need is difficult and involves a lot of science as the instruments are being made.  Even that effort seems very meaningful when it means that children can experience something wonderful in their lives.  These children were unlikely to have music in their lives at all if not for these recycled instruments, and they seem to recognize how valuable it is.  How sad that we must imagine music being removed from our lives or difficult to obtain in order to grasp its power and magic in our lives!

I feel like I have to fight the battle of why music is important every day.  In fact, it is easy for me to say that I am tired of fighting the battle of why music matters because I feel like I have to defend it so often.  Therefore, I have made every attempt in my job to demonstrate the power of music as I work with my students and as I speak to their parents about music.

The first way to educate people about the importance of music is to directly speak to the students and facilitate a discussion with them about why music matters.  Since the students are the ones who are being taught music and are experiencing music, if they do not find value in it, who else will?  I have done activities with my students at all grade levels to inspire their minds to think intelligently about why music is important in their lives.  For example, I recently did a project with first graders in which they had to answer the question, “How do I use music in my life?” and then draw a picture that showed their statement.  Not only did the activity allow me to incorporate reading and writing activities into music as well as art, the students inspired me by coming up with what I considered to be very meaningful and creative responses for first graders.  One student wrote that listening to music calmed her down when she felt angry.  Another student wrote that singing along with songs in the car made him feel close with his family.

The second way to education people about the importance of music is to show and speak to the parents about how music is positively influencing their children’s lives.  With the first grade activity mentioned above, I displayed the student answers on the wall outside my classroom for Open House.  Many parents came by my classroom and discussed their child’s answers with me.  At performances, I always try to include a short segment where I outline the children’s musical activities for the year to give parents an idea of what their children are doing in my classroom.  I also try to inform parents that there are three areas of music experiences:  performing, creating, and responding, and that I try to incorporate these into my class activities as often as possible.  I think that many parents are simply uninformed or uneducated about how to learn about music, and organizing musical ideas into these three categories is a great starting point to get parents thinking about music in their own lives.

A third way to education people about music is to make music experiences something for the whole community or even the world to understand.  In the technology in music education course that I recently completed, we discussed forms in which technology can help spread musical ideas.  One of the discussions that began was the idea to blog about lesson planning and activities that occur in the music classroom and regularly remind parents of the link so that they can be updated.  Making a blog also allows anyone in the world, or anyone with access to the blog, to be inspired by and/or experience music in my classroom.  I intend to develop my blog over the summer and update it weekly beginning next school year.  A friend of mine who teaches music in the Chicago suburbs created a blog a few years ago.  She stated that the blog has really helped her validate her music classes to fellow teachers, administration, parents, and other music teachers because there is proof of the value of what she does in the evidence of activities from her music classroom.

Lastly, everyone participates in music in some ways.  A great starting point for education people about music is helping them to see the cognitive value in the music they already listen to.  Whether for expressive purposes, just for fun, or to experience something wonderful that one would not otherwise be able to experience, such as the recycled instrument students in Paraguay, music can bring all people to a new and better level of meaning in their lives.