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Reader Responses
Our readers respond to Barb Tilsen's editorial "What
Can Music Give"
As a full-time children's musician (I teach in schools, teach
piano privately, and present children's music and movement
programs), I find myself constantly asking myself if I'm doing
enough in this crazy world that has so many problems and needs
so much. How am I helping when all I'm doing is singing and
teaching music all day long?
Of course, I think back to my own childhood in the 1960s. I
grew up hearing Pete Seeger sing wonderful old folk songs. My
parents would take me out of school to go to anti-war
demonstrations, and singing peace songs with a whole group of
people made me know that we can change the world. But what stays
strongest in my heart and mind is my fourth grade teacher, who
brought in her guitar and sang with us every day – "Old
Stewball," "Follow the Drinking Gourd,"
"Blowing in the Wind," Jamaica Farewell." That
was the year my already dysfunctional family totally fell apart,
and boy, did that music help. So I knew the power of music. When
my own children were born and had terrible colic and various
neurological differences, music got us through. We made up songs
for everything, because my son couldn't talk until he was three,
but he could sing from the time he was eight months old.
Sometimes I wonder if music created an illusion that isn't
really true–can we really change the world, or was that just
some hypnotic effect that isn't real–and am I just passing on a
false hope to a new generation? No, I refuse to believe that. As
my brother was getting on a bus from Boston to Washington, D.C.,
in 1970 for another anti-war demonstration, my father's parting
words were, "If things are feeling tough, sing, and
everyone will sing with you." That is always my experience
with children. Even the gang members in an inner-city park join
in when there's a good rhythm going, and I believe that plants a
seed of hope, of difference, that something else can happen
beyond what is seen in the news. I think we have a
responsibility to keep that hope alive, especially as singing is
less and less a common thing to do.
Joanie Calem
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