Excerpt from Me, Myself and I
Children have an innate appetite for music. Music is the superb para-language between emotion, expression, and imagination. Here in the musical world, feelings come together with play, movement, and memory in a way that is not ultimately dependent on language. And that is precisely why it is so indispensable to the young child across culture and class.
All young children, even those with only minimal hearing, have a powerful, almost riveting affinity for music. Research has shown that the fetus responds to musical cues from the middle trimester onward and never stops attending to it afterward. And infants are the same. Watch an infant’s face as you sing or play music. Even words rarely elicit such a complex reaction. The desire to move and bounce to, kick feet to, rock back and fourth to – even match the mood of – almost any musical stimulus is powerful in most children.
By the era we are discussing, play with music is so complex and rich, it probably teaches more economically than any formal kind of instruction. The neurobiological processes underlying the appreciation and facilitation of music-assisted play and interaction involve the brain pathways for memory, hearing, balance, motor control, hormonal secretion, cognition, and, of course, emotion. Talk about a big bang for the developmental buck!
Take the simple circle song “…all fall down” (I grew up with the version, “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” at which point everyone collapses to the ground while still trying to hold hands). What is the expression on the child’s face as he anticipates the collapse, knowing exactly what is about to happen, evoked repeatedly by the senseless musical cue? What role does cooperation play? Motoric competence? Interpersonal interest? Memory? Emotion? Shared emotion? Imagination? Which element is primary? What else in our world can stir such a mutual response across generations and cultures? I can’t think of a thing.
