I agree that music exposure is important

Date: 2014-02-06 10:25 pm (UTC)
walkitout: (Default)
From: [personal profile] walkitout
In retrospect, I had consistently excellent pitch, and my oldest sister (who was the most diligent of all of us about practicing her music) had consistently terrible pitch. She was also the only one even exposed marginally at home to "classical" music. In one of my explore-every-corner-of-the-house moments in my 20s, I found my parents' stash of classical, opera, etc. LPs. I was stunned; I had no idea they had any. I played a ton, because a lot of it was stuff I had familiarity with on my own or through school, but had never heard it in the house. When I confronted my mother with this, she said she'd bought them at garage sales when pregnant with the eldest, having heard that it would be Good for the Kiddies -- and then discovered to her chagrin that she loathed all of it (she was a bobby soxer to such a degree that even tho she graduated high school in 1958, when she heard the Beatles' I Wanna Hold Your Hand some time after 1985, she didn't recognize it, thought it was terrible, and blamed _my_ generation for it. By contrast, she thought Pink Floyd was perfectly acceptable. *shrug*).

Long and short, I think it's pretty awesome for kids to be able to encounter a lot of different media (music, video, etc.) and for them to be able to pick what they want more of, when they want more of it. And I'm currently enchanted with T.'s obsession with Chic's "Real People" and a couple of Bessie Smith songs, largely because they are so unexpected. Slamming stuff that kids like just strikes me as misguided, and attempting to professionalize or "fix" things is not as straightforward as advocates believe, and can do real artistic and aesthetic damage, not to mention reify some classist bullshit that just makes me tired to even think about.

ETA: I think he likes "Real People" for the super awesome guitar whine, which is heavy at the beginning and then sprinkled throughout.
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