early childhood education
Bringing the Balance in Musical Preferences
Alena V. Holmes, WMEA State Chair, Early Childhood Education
Throughout the past few years, during the first class session, I gave my college students the assign- ment called, “My Musical Identity.” I asked students to share musical vid- eo/audio and back-
ground information of their favorite artist/ band – one that they associate with their personal identity. Surprisingly most of my non-music majors identify their top three favorite styles of music as hip-hop, heavy metal and alternative electronic music. However, music majors usually prefer classic rock and roll, blues, jazz, Broadway, alternative rock and classical. I have noticed that musical preferences of music majors are more wide-ranging and comprehensive. As an educator I kept wondering: how can we help our future generations of professionals to be more artful, musical, inclusive, open-eared and open-minded? Most of my non-music major students are planning to be class- room teachers, early childhood profes- sionals and sound engineers, and they will be accountable for the development of musical taste and identities of our future generations.
I strongly believe that in the contempo- rary world, music is used increasingly as a means by which we formulate and express our personal identities. In the book “Musical Identities,” MacDonald, Hargreaves and Miell (2002) state that we use music not only to regulate our own everyday moods and behaviors, but also to present ourselves to others in the way we prefer. Our musical tastes and prefer- ences can form an important statement of our values and attitudes, and composers and performers use their music to express their own distinctive views of the world. Nicholas Cook (1998) describes that very precisely: “In today’s world, deciding what music to listen to is a significant part of deciding and announcing to people not just who you “want to be” … but who you are. “Music” is a very small word to encompass something that takes as many forms as there are cultural or sub-cultural identities.” (p. 5)
Developing Musical Preferences
Research on musical preferences has tended to focus on the influence of socio- economic differences in preferences for cultural taste. For sure, culture is produced and consumed in the family context. Par- ents’ socialization of their children has
“Early musical identities are based on learning one’s own position and role in relation to the reactions and communications of the other people around.”
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been identified as the key mechanism for the transfer of class-specific taste patterns (Katz-Gerro, 2002). Parents often control the resources available to their children and manage their environments. One of the most striking findings of the recent developmental literature is the study of infant musicality; the research results demonstrate that biological and social influences jointly shape musical develop- ment. Parents reinforce the musical as- pects of early vocalizations; that gives rise to speech and words and to more specific musical activities such as imitation and improvisation. These early interactions develop the foundations of musical self- identity. Early musical identities are based on learning one’s own position and role in relation to the reactions and communica- tions of the other people around. Research of Soley and Hannon (2010) indicated that exposure to music in early months of life generate differential preferences. By four months of age, Turkish and American in- fants have different listening preferences, each favoring culturally typical music. In a recent study of 325 adolescents and their parents, Bogt, Delsing, Zalk, Chris- tenson and Meeus (2011) concluded that
April 2016
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