The beloved shop, which was featured in an  short  last year, repairs students’ school instruments across the district: taking in, fixing up and and sending back school pianos, tubas and drum sets on a daily basis.

It’s been operating for 65 years, and now the shop needs to raise $15 million to ensure it keeps functioning well into the future, said Ben Proudfoot, who co-directed the Academy Award-winning documentary about the shop and co-chairs its fundraising campaign. 

This month, the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation gave the shop a big start on its ambitious goal, with a $1 million gift. 

And to celebrate, cellist Yo-Yo Ma visited and played a couple riffs at a party held in the shop’s slightly ramshackle, downtown L.A. warehouse digs.  

“That’s the thing with this particular project, it’s hard to argue with,” explained documentary co-director Proudfoot, who is also campaign committee co-chair for the repair shop’s fundraising efforts; and why it attracts such support. “It’s just really an important thing.”

And the shop itself, a windowless warehouse encircled by a security fence, is due for an upgrade. 

Surrounded by blocks of choking traffic and not so far from skid row, the shop’s entrance is marked by a pair of fireproof doors and an unassuming sign reading  “Musical Instrument Repair.”

Many people had no idea about the shop, and even those who used it didn’t quite grasp its significance, said Proudfoot. 

But what stood out to him was that it was the last of its kind. 

The country’s second-largest district is the only one left where students could have full access to music education without spending their own families’ money, Proudfoot said. That’s in part due to the repair shop that keeps their instruments working.   

That’s a big deal for a school district where about 80% of students live in poverty.

Proudfoot said music education is important for all students, not just the ones particularly wealthy, lucky, or skillful.

“You learn discipline, you learn to listen, you learn you play a part in a whole,” Proudfoot said. “There are so many great lessons in music education.”

But Proudfoot said he noticed immediately why the shop needed help. There weren’t enough employees to cover the work. Only a dozen district employees were tasked with repairing and maintaining about 130,000 school instruments.

Amid the pandemic, L.A. Unified used federal relief money to purchase roughly 32,000 new musical instruments for students. The repair shop was busier than ever. 

With many employees on the verge of retirement, the shop needed publicity to bring in skilled technicians or job seekers willing to learn. 

So, Proudfoot and co-director Kris Bowers decided to put their filmmaking skills to use to help the shop. The plan worked, with the documentary garnering massive national attention — and also winning an Oscar.  

Now the pair is helping with fundraising for the shop. Proudfoot said 90% of the money raised will go to apprentice programs to train the next generation of repair shop workers.

As an extra incentive to get big donors, sections of the repair shop can be named in their honor or for their loved ones. 

The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation was the first to make a donation; now a new sign in the repair shop reads “The Lorre Family Strings Department” in honor of their donation. 

That $1 million is more than all of the other donations thus far combined, and will allow the district to begin training the next generation of repair shop workers. 

To make the celebration even more spectacular, the students and faculty got a visit from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who underscored the shop’s importance. 

“The young people that are getting these instruments, they will probably see the world in the year 2100,” Ma  â€œWe may not see that world, but we can help make it possible that world is actually a good world.” 

Proudfoot said the best part of fundraising is seeing small donations from over 30 states where people have no connection to the shop, but feel compelled to help in any way they can. 

Those small donations, added to the $1 million, have brought the total to $1.7 million in less than a year. 

Proudfoot said Ma was no different, and getting him to come to the event was as simple as showing him the documentary about the shop. 

“We told him, ‘Do you want the little girls in this film to have a violin or not?,’” Proudfoot said. “If you do, then you gotta show up. That’s our campaign.” 

This article is part of a collaboration between ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

“Kids interrupt a lot,” Joyce says with a laugh. “And they ask the most random questions that have nothing to do with music. Their curiosity isn’t limited to whatever you’re trying to talk about. They somehow found a way to connect dinosaurs with saxophones. Then I would have to try to redirect the conversation from dinosaurs or ‘Bluey’ to music.

“We tried to teach them how the saxophone works—the reed, the mouthpiece, the keys. My favorite part was when they came up to the saxophone and peered down into the bell, reaching their little hands in to see what was down there. But they were more interested in the weird noises we could make.”

Joyce says he had thought the 4- and 5-year-olds might be impressed with his lightning fast runs on the scales. They were universally blasé about that, but when the sax players made multiphonic train horn sounds, or honked like geese, the class was enrapt.

Transforming from Student to Teacher

What Joyce learned about acknowledging the children’s curiosity while moving forward with class material is familiar territory to teachers everywhere, and such awareness was part of Dr. Daniel Abrahams’ motivation for creating the Music Zoo program. Abrahams is associate professor and coordinator of Music Education at the University of Arkansas/Fayetteville.

“Our Intro to Music Education course is the first Music Education class the students take,” Abrahams says. “We talk about what it means to be a teacher, what schools are for, why we teach, and I thought this would be a good way for them to work with some kids right off the bat and see if they like it. Nobody wants to spend three or four years in college and realize at the very end, ‘You know, I don’t actually like working with kids.’

“To have this experience at the beginning of their journey really helped solidify their ideas of what it meant to be a teacher. These are all pandemic students whose last two years of high school were pretty much on their computers in lockdown. I had students who had never worked with kids before and had no idea whether they were going to like it. After the experience, they were saying, ‘I love this. I know I’ve made the right choice in what I’ve decided to do with my life.’”

The Jean Tyson Child Development Center is located on the Fayetteville campus, so it wasn’t too much of a schlep for the musicians to take their instruments over, from violins and cellos to the woodwinds—flute, clarinet and saxophone. The percussionists were crowd favorites, possibly because they brought a variety of small hand drums and invited the little ones to play along. The saxophone was also popular (see “train horn and honking geese” above).

Best of all were the tuba and the baritone sax, both of which were taller than many of the preschoolers. Seizing the moment, the teachers turned those demonstrations into a brief foray into math concepts: “Let’s guess if you’ll be bigger than the tuba.”

Because this is the University of Arkansas (Go Razorbacks!) and many of the kids are children of faculty members or staff, they were familiar with the school’s marching band and were jazzed to make the connection between the students demonstrating their flutes, tubas and drums with the uniformed marchers they saw at football games. Instant stardom for the musicians.

On a more serious note, Abrahams said he had been discussing the idea of music aptitude with his students throughout the semester, based on the work of music learning researcher who wrote about music development in infants and young children.

“We talked about what influenced them to become musicians and the idea that you ever know what might influence a student into wanting to be involved in music,” Abrahams says. “Children have a musical aptitude from birth that stabilizes around the age of 9, and any musical experience they have will help them have a richer musical life later. That one morning of sitting and learning about the flute or the clarinet and hearing them played might inspire that student to want to play an instrument when they get a little older.

“The students took the assignment quite seriously,” he says, “because they felt they were influencing the next generation of musicians. The experience was transformational in the ways the students began to see themselves as teachers.”

A Rich Resource

The musicians researched to be au courant with music for the preschool set and came prepared to play the theme songs for Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, YouTube’s Bluey, and the classic Baby Shark (doo-doo-ti-doo). The vocalists sang the 4- and 5-year-olds’ songs they’d learned especially for them and the children reciprocated by teaching the college kids some of their preschool tunes— in 4/4 time.

The greatest number of requests were for the University of Arkansas Fight Song, which Abrahams’ students knew by heart because most are in the marching band. In recognizing the theme songs from a few notes the musicians played, the children didn’t know that they were demonstrating Gordon’s theories, but they were. By recognizing or remembering a tune, they were thinking music, which Gordon called “,” the foundation of musicianship.

The musicians were especially impressed by the questions the preschoolers asked about their instruments, Abrahams says. The little kids were blown away by the tuning pegs on the stringed instruments getting higher the tighter the peg was turned and predicted that they would get lower if the peg was looser (Hello, ).

The success of the initial Music Zoo program has earned it a permanent place in the Intro to Music Education curriculum, Abrahams says, with an additional, unexpected benefit.

“The child development center is starving for people to come in and do learning activities with their children and they’re right here on campus” he says. “This great resource just fell into our laps. It’s a partnership that not only provides a valuable first teaching experience for our students but is also fostering positive interactions with the child care staff and our local community.”

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has announced the creation of a North Carolina Music Office to bolster and honor the state’s music industry and its artists by investing in the industry and creating music programming.

“North Carolina’s vibrant music industry is a key part of our state’s creative economy, driving economic growth and supporting nearly 45,000 jobs,” Cooper said in a . “An official N.C. Music Office will support this growing and important industry.”

The office will raise awareness of North Carolina’s musical heritage and education efforts while promoting economic development within the state through the music industry.

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This new office will be based within the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR) and will be equipped with a team to create a state music strategy through partnerships with several groups, including the N.C. Arts Council,  the N.C. Museum of Art, the N.C. Museum of History, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, the N.C. American Indian Heritage Commission, and more.

The office’s team will also partner with organizations such as Visit NC, the N.C. Department of Commerce, and PBS North Carolina.

Educational content will also remain part of the office’s efforts, with collaboration planned between DNCR educators and the N.C. Arts Council, state symphony, and state museums to generate educational programming, said Michele Walker, public information officer for the DNCR.

“The Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is uniquely positioned to support the new North Carolina Music Office thanks to our already robust cultural and educational programming centered on North Carolina music,” said DNCR Secretary Reid Wilson in the release. “We are excited to expand our resources and opportunities for the state’s thriving music industry—one that creates jobs and improves quality of life in all 100 counties.”

Cooper made the announcement on June 21 while proclaiming the day . A few other states such as Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee also have state-supported music offices, according to Cooper’s office.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

When we hear the word, “lullaby,” most of us imagine something like the dictionary definition of “a gentle, quiet song that lulls a child to sleep,” a cradle song to soothe a baby’s way to the Land of Nod.

For the past 12 years, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute has been refining that definition with its Lullaby Project, pairing new and expecting parents with professional teaching artists to write lullabies for their babies. Because the parents and caregivers come from a variety of racial, cultural and geographic backgrounds, you’re as likely to hear merengue or the Afrobeat of a djembe as you are to hear a sweet rock-a-bye.

“They’re not all soothing,” says Sarah Johnson, Carnegie Hall’s chief education officer and director of the Weill Music Institute (WMI). “They really become love songs and whatever the parents want them to be. Sometimes a mom will say, ‘My baby is so active, I want to write more of a dance song for her.’ Some of the parents have quite detailed ideas about the music before they even start writing, and others not so much. But it all comes from the parents so the range is huge.”

The began in Jacobi Medical Center, a New York City public hospital in the Bronx, when a cross-disciplinary team invited WMI to collaborate on a program to support the hospital’s teenage mothers and young parents. Medical staff had observed that the young parents were dealing with high stress levels that sometimes got in the way of their bonding with their infants.

The idea of working with a small group of parents to write personal lullabies for their infants and create a simple recording of the song, evolved into Lullaby’s pilot in 2011. Over the years it has expanded to reach parents in healthcare settings, homeless shelters, high schools and correctional settings. The project, which is now part of WMI’s early childhood and family programs, has nearly 60 organizations worldwide, with well over 4,000 unique lullabies having been written in more than 40 languages — and it’s still growing.

It Starts with a Few Words

The process often starts with the parents being asked to write a letter to their child or to write down their hopes and dreams for themselves as caregivers.

“We ask them where they can imagine their child years from now,” says Tiffany Ortiz, Director of WMI’s early childhood programs. “It serves as a pause button for families to reflect on their parenting experiences and their relationship with their child or child-to-be.

“We have a lullaby journal, which offers a range of prompts. One of the most popular is writing a letter to their baby where parents or caregivers are encouraged to express their hopes and dreams or any stories they want to share with their child. Caregivers are encouraged to think about the language they want to pass down, the cultural rituals within their family they want to pass along or any personal stories about their parenthood experience they want to include.

“We encourage them to think about the melody they want to add to the messages that they wrote, in the right key so they feel comfortable singing this lullaby to their child. We want the song to be something they continue to use, not something that sits on a shelf. We want it to be an active part of families engaging with each other and perhaps passing it down generation to generation, so that it ends up being a beautiful gift to the families.”

My babies, sweet babies,
I love you like crazy.
You’re wonderful and fun,
Sweet like honey buns.

The parents or caregivers are paired with teaching artists and songwriters who work with them to structure lyrics from the key ideas they’ve written, expanding on one another’s ideas and trying out possible melodies and arranging the instrumentation. Accompaniment runs the gamut from piano to marimba, flute to cello, and an array of percussion instruments guaranteed to punctuate and enliven any sentiment. A roster of professional musicians works with the families to create and arrange a song that is uniquely, singularly theirs. The lullaby is recorded for the parent to keep and sing again and again. Each year, some of the new works are selected to be performed at the Hall, some sung by the project’s professional musicians and some by the parents themselves. It’s a delicious process, as plainly seen in of the 2023 Lullaby Project’s Celebration Concert.

And the effect apparently lasts. Now that the project is entering its 13^th year, WMI has started hosting alumni days to invite lullaby writers to come back to the Hall and share how they’re doing.

“Last year we had a family who came with their 8-year-old who said, ‘We still know our song and we still sing it.’” Ortiz says. “They were so excited to be in the space again and to share and revisit their songs. We’re seeing some long-term ripple effects — seeing so many families come back after many years with their kids grown to share how meaningful the experience has been for them.”

However inspiring, performance is not the project’s primary aim or value. The design was to strengthen the bond between parent and child, aid child development and support parent’s health and well-being, all of which have been accomplished — and then some — according to qualitative analysis by arts research firm WolfBrown, which WMI commissioned to evaluate the project from 2011 to 2017. Researchers found “marked differences” in participants’ positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and sense of achievement, key markers for measuring well-being. Some of the lullaby writers who performed their songs had never spoken — much less sung — in front of an audience.

“You can see people being brave,” Johnson says. “A couple of years ago when one of our writers, Anya, performed, she was shaking when she introduced herself and told her story. You could tell that it was hard for her, but she has this amazing voice, and in that moment, you see her bravery and you see all these other people leaning in and encouraging her. It was quite beautiful.” (Watch Anya’s performance of her lullaby, “,” accompanied by teaching artists James and Camila.)

Feeding the Artists

The Lullaby Project has nourished not only the families but the participating musicians and songwriters as well. Johnson says WMI offers the musicians who come into the project professional training and development, along with the resources they need to be successful in their role in supporting the lullaby writers. She also acknowledges that the work isn’t for everyone because not every musician is comfortable with the service aspect of supporting another person’s creativity and process of discovery.

For many though, she says, that has been the most magical part of the process.

“We have many local teaching artists who’ve been part of the project since the inception and continue to come back,” Johnson says. “One said that what feeds them about the project is that they always learn something new about themselves and their community. It isn’t just the parents who are vulnerable. The artists learn from the families in that exchange.

“The artists have created this community of practice where they gather and bring their challenges, they bring something they’re proud of, a song they love that they wrote with someone. Those are durable and generative relationships.”

The process is as much about trust as it is about music, Ortiz says.

“We talk a lot about attunement between parent and child, but there’s quite a bit of attunement that needs to happen among the facilitator, musician and the parent. That requires a level of deep listening, trust-building and a lot of generosity.”

Scaling the Project

Part of the Weill Music Institute’s DNA is to broadly share what they’ve developed, Johnson says. They have designed the Lullaby Project to be nimble, portable and scalable. Although they believe in the superpower of artists, she says, they have looked beyond the professional teaching artists they work with to see who else in a community might be able to bring the project to families most in need. For example, they’re exploring a project with a partner in India that would provide a simple set of video resources that would enable health workers to support lullaby writing in their communities. Their lead partner in Australia is experimenting with creating a library of lullaby music templates to which personalized lyrics could be added, expanding the capacity of lullaby writing without benefit of facilitators.

“The growth has been organic,” Johnson says. “When we moved from Jacobi Medical Center, it was because people wanted to take it other places and were knocking on our door asking if they could take it to a refugee camp in Athens or to this or that place. We have access to extraordinary resources — the Carnegie Hall name, our artistic relationships, our human capital and our partnerships — that enable us to develop things that are often useful in other places. And then give them away.

“We dream about a world in which every parent might be able to write a personal lullaby for their child,” she says. “A colleague of ours often says that when a child is born, so too is a parent and when we think about these personal lullabies, they are just as much for the parent as they are for the child. These lullabies are little vessels of love, and who wouldn’t want more of that in the world.”

Taking Your Toddler to Carnegie Hall

If music be the food of love, then Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) offers a banquet the whole family can feast on. WMI encompasses the Hall’s education and social impact programs, whose mission is to make great music accessible to the widest possible audience. Hundreds of families in New York City and throughout the world have found their way to music through Carnegie Hall’s array of age-appropriate offerings, from live performances to free online resources to spark the curiosity and enthusiasm that can last a lifetime. More than 800,000 people each year engage in WMI’s programs through national and international partnerships, in New York City schools and community settings, and at Carnegie Hall.

The early childhood programs of are designed specifically with babies and toddlers in mind — colorful, lively and sometimes silly — creating musical experiences that feed the developing brain and imagination. Since its inception 12 years ago, the Lullaby Project has been at the heart of the WMI’s early childhood programs, a rich ecosystem that brings music to life in a child’s earliest years.

Resources

• To better understand the effect of music in early childhood development, Carnegie Hall commissioned papers from arts research expert Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf. The first, , points to key reasons why investing in children early and often is critical to healthy development and a successful future — and demonstrates the role music can play in everyday interactions that support children.
• , looks at how and why lullabies make a difference, highlighting how the Lullaby Project helps families come together and imagine a positive future for children, and how writing a lullaby often can support a deeper process of connecting and communicating among parents, grandparents, musicians, staff and community members.
• Inspired by the Lullaby Project, the Bernard van Leer Foundation commissioned WolfBrown to write a paper, , which explores the Lullaby Project alongside early childhood programming from around the world.
• Unwind with Lullabies: Hopes & Dreams In April 2018, Decca Gold (Universal Music Group) released an album of 15 original lullabies written by Lullaby Project participants and performed by world renowned artists including Fiona Apple, the Brentano String Quartet, Lawrence Brownlee, Rosanne Cash, Joyce DiDonato, AngĂ©lique Kidjo, Natalie Merchant, Dianne Reeves, Gilberto Santa Rosa and others. The album is available from the  and other online retailers.

Surrounded by blocks of choking Los Angeles traffic, homeless encampments and garbage, a windowless warehouse encircled by a security fence is the unlikely setting for “The Last Repair Shop,” an  now  on March 10. 

“You don’t see it in the movie,” said Ben Proudfoot, one of the directors of the documentary that brought the workshop so much attention. “But next to the repair shop is the LAUSD locksmith, and there’s people building windows, and a metal shop and people painting signs. All of the crafts are there, in this sort of fenced-in block.”   

The fanciful short film that focuses on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s throwback music instrument repair operation, which 20 years ago employed 60 and is now staffed by fewer than a dozen workers, has sparked an outpouring of public support that will go even beyond the workshop itself. 

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is an early contributor to a new, $15 million capital campaign run by the district’s foundation that aims to get the repair squad a better ventilation system, a new ultrasonic cleaner, more instrument cases and an apprentice program.   

Not that anybody on the workshop’s small-but-mighty team is complaining about their no-frills setup just south of Skid Row. They arrive before sunrise, said shop supervisor Steve Bagmanyan, and do their jobs quietly. 

“At the end of the day, you know that the student in the school ends up with an instrument in his hands,” said Bagmanyan, who started more than twenty years ago as a piano tech. “The music programs go on, and we’re part of it. That’s all that matters.”

Since the documentary was released, things have changed.

Bagmanyan’s inbox is filled each morning with emails from people wanting to donate instruments or money, or volunteer, or just saying how the shop and film inspired them to keep teaching. 

One person who saw the film donated a harp. Others have given violins, guitars and drums. Proudfoot, Bagmanyan and the district have capitalized on the attention with a fundraiser announced last month seeking to raise the $15 million for the operation, which is the last of its kind in the nation. 

Still, the shop is the same as ever.

A pair of fireproof doors and a sign reading “Musical Instrument Repair” mark the entrance to the unassuming warehouse, which is sheathed in unpainted fiberglass panels. 

But a crooning bassoon, a lilting flute, or tinkling piano might be filling the air. 

Burnished saxophones hang from the walls of the shop, where stacks of bass drums, violins in their cases, french horns, guitars and pianos line a long hallway leading to an inventory room crossed with rows of shelves bearing new instruments headed for schools. 

Beyond that, there’s a woodshop for fabricating obsolete parts, and the piano room, where a half-dozen uprights and baby grands are getting tuned and having their soundboards cleaned and hammers balanced. 

It smells of sawdust, polishing compound and coffee. Bagmanyan’s office is next to a bullpen populated by workstations manned by technicians working on string instruments and horns. 

Proudfoot calls the workshop a “North Pole” for school instruments, because it resembles the gift shop run by Santa Claus. The documentary caught fire when it was released last year, drawing more than 464,000 views on Youtube and landing on Disney’s streaming platform. 

Dozens of  and  about the shop and film followed.

Bagmanyan’s team was honored in January at a ceremony at Los Angeles’s City Hall. Shop workers gave a musical performance at a school board meeting, where the superintendent sang their praises for keeping music education alive in the nation’s second-largest district.

Sara Mooney, interim president and CEO of the LAUSD Education Foundation, the district’s affiliated nonprofit charity, said the funding will not only go to modernize the shop, but to help support the district’s burgeoning offerings in music education for all students. 

A 2022 California law increased state funding for music classes in Los Angeles and districts across California. Amid the pandemic, L.A. Unified used federal relief money to purchase roughly 32,000 new musical instruments for students. The repair shop is busier than ever. 

“We need an investment to meet the moment, and meet the needs of expanded music programs,” said Mooney. “This is a moment to build on the momentum of the documentary and expand the impact of the repair shop.” 

It won’t be easy. Bagmanyan said it’s getting harder to find skilled luthiers, windsmiths and braziers who can fix the instruments that arrive at his shop daily, with all sorts of damage. Most of the staff have been there for years. 

The shop is now hiring to replace a string technician profiled in the film who recently retired. Bagmanyan hopes the publicity will attract candidates, but he doesn’t know how many have applied. 

Many of the district’s instruments date back to the 1930’s. Bagmanyan said old instruments are higher quality, but they require expensive upkeep. 

A few of the schools in Los Angeles even have pipe organs on campus, he said, but when they break they’re too costly to repair. One job at a local school got an estimate of $2 million, after kids got into the organ’s works and broke some pipes, Bagmanyan said.    

Titus Campos, administrator of LAUSD’s Arts Education branch, said the district’s goal is to offer band electives at every middle school and high school, and to provide music education at every elementary school. 

“We’re almost there,” said Campos. But not quite. The district is contending with a shortage of music teachers, and about ten music teaching slots in LAUSD remain unfilled, he said.  

Meanwhile, Bagmanyan and his team are enjoying the attention from Hollywood.   

Estella Patricia Moreno, who repairs bass instruments in the shop, said she can’t believe she’ll soon be attending the Oscars.

“I’m a little nervous, because I don’t have hair or makeup,” said Moreno as she sat at her desk cleaning a french horn. “I’m just doing my job. Something that I really like, and enjoy. And on top of that, I was pretty much rewarded. It’s an overwhelming experience.” 

Music education – which traditionally has been – is changing with the times. Not since the introduction of the or the growth of has music education undergone such a transformation.

The changes occurring now have been developed to bring more students into school and community music classes at all levels of education, from kindergarten to college.

As a – and as one who is that go above and beyond the traditional band, choir and orchestra offerings – I believe this is one of the most exciting times in the world of music education. Here are five ways that music education is changing in America’s schools:

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1. Students are making their own songs

In 2021, Florida became the first state to offer an for students in high school. As members of the collective, the state’s best student pop singers, drummers, guitarists, DJs, bassists and keyboardists perform their original music in an auditioned group. They perform music from hip-hop to pop and rock.

In 2023, Missouri started – its version of the Florida offering. Students send in an audition video. If selected, they become a member of a band of around 15 people who write songs together and perform at the state conference, along with the best concert band, concert choir and orchestra students in the state.

As of now, for their students.

There are a growing number of opportunities for students to study at the collegiate level. Schools like the , where I teach, have joined established programs at the , the and as places where you can learn how to make hip-hop as well as pop, rock and country, among other styles.

2. Smaller ensembles

In the middle of the 20th century, school music focused on performing primarily classical music arrangements. Since the 1990s, offerings like – with marching percussion and color guard – and , which incorporate contemporary instrumentation, have extended those offerings and broadened the spectrum of acceptable styles.

have popped up in schools all over , featuring smaller, more , modern musical instruments and tools that sometimes includes . They seek to look more like the .

3. Teaching that focuses more on the student

For much of the past 100 years, music teachers have focused on being able to teach large numbers of students – that is, 100 or more. Instructors across the U.S. and Canada teach made up of 200-plus students.

Music instructors are some of the only teachers in the school who want more students in their classes. Pedagogical practice consists of managing large groups of students as efficiently as possible. But this approach tends to discourage individual voice and autonomy. That’s changing. With comes more room for and more .

4. Technology driven performances

Music education has become more and more technology driven, both in its and . In smaller ensembles and in pop music, it’s important to . You do not have to know how to set up a mixing console to have a successful traditional concert band performance.

and are two instruments that have become popular for creating beats and multilayered ambient textures. They satisfy a desire among students to create music that they might hear on the radio but also maybe in a video game that they’re playing or in a movie that they’re watching.

Turntables have gone from being carried around by DJs – along with crates of records to scratch – to hardware devices. Musical effects that are triggered by the performer or someone offstage are . These practices are .

5. Recording in addition to performing

, people have been recording musical sounds. Over that time, individuals have been honing their abilities to . It has become an art in its own right.

The life of a musician is made up of two primary focuses: . While performing is a part of school music education, recording has been almost entirely ignored as something that students do, until now.

Teachers have been able to easily record students’ music only via over the past 20 years.

We are in a new era when school recording studios are more the norm and .

About , largely through traditional bands, choirs and orchestras. But that number could shift as music education continues to evolve to become more about the students and the music that’s dear to them, not just the classics and traditions of old.

, Professor of Music Education,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

A record producer and music historian, Van Zandt has been a member of two well-known rock bands: Springsteen’s legendary E Street Band and the influential Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. A fierce promoter of American popular music, he’s in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Van Zandt found a new generation of fans in 1999 as TV mob consigliere Silvio Dante on “The Sopranos.” Twelve years later, he co-wrote, executive produced and starred in “Lilyhammer,” Netflix’s first original scripted series. 

Oh, and before that, he landed a blow against the apartheid-era government of South Africa by organizing the all-star 1985 recording session that produced the protest anthem “,” in which major artists vowed they’d boycott its eponymous segregated resort. 

But in 2006, Van Zandt launched , a free, comprehensive U.S. history course for K-12 students that uses pop culture to teach about the period between World War II and the near-present. 

The lessons now number in the hundreds, and encompass every grade level. One middle-school lesson uses poetry and music to explore ways in which the United Farm Workers movement and contributed to civil rights struggles and the feminist movement. Another, for younger students, uses documentary footage and folk music to help students understand the environmental legacy of by coal-mining companies in Appalachia. Students eventually create their own folk ballad about an environmental issue of their choice. 

This fall, the program will get a big boost as the at Monmouth University, a wide-ranging collection of materials related to Springsteen in particular and popular music more generally, partners with Van Zandt’s nonprofit. The partnership gives TeachRock access to a vast array of original material and allows it for the first time to bring teachers to the archives for workshops and events. 

“We’re really excited to work with them to build bridges between classrooms and the center,” said Executive Director Bill Carbone. He noted an upcoming symposium in October celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of Springsteen’s sophomore effort, “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.” The event will feature original members of the E Street Band.

TeachRock is already in more than 30,000 schools in all 50 states, and a recent that interviewed participants found that, by far, students were most engaged when they were “learning something new that opened students’ eyes or caused them to think of something in a way they hadn’t before.” 

With the current Springsteen tour on hiatus — the band leader is being treated for a peptic ulcer — Van Zandt, 72, sat down this month with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ from his New York City home and talked about his program, his musical education and the legacy that baby boomers leave behind.

“I think it’s an obligation,” he said. “I really do feel it’s a responsibility for us to pass along something that was better than we had.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ: One of the things I remembered from talking to you in 2020 is asking about this quote of yours, where you said, “I had a vacation once in 1978, and I didn’t like it.” And I wonder: It’s three years later. Have you had a vacation yet? And if so, did you like it?

Steven Van Zandt: No, but I’m starting to understand the concept (laughs). 

So you’re easing into it?

Yeah. I’m discovering these things called weekends. And all kinds of revelations are coming to me late in life.

Excellent. Obviously, we’re going to talk about the work you’re doing in education. But I wanted to ask you about your own musical education. I wanted to actually spool back a little bit and ask about your earliest musical memory.

My earliest musical memory? That’s a good one. I want to say what comes to mind is the Mickey Mouse thing. “,” was it?

Did you have a lot of music in your house when you were a kid?

Not really. My father was a part of a barbershop quartet. So I was exposed to that quite young. That may have planted my love of doo-wop. But around the house, not so much.

You talk about the Beatles a lot and their Ed Sullivan Show debut on Feb. 9, 1964, and the effect that had on you. That’s such an important part of your story.

What we call the British Invasion was a major turning point in my life. Pop music has always been around. We actually had good pop music in the fifties and early sixties. I started buying some singles a few years before the British Invasion happened. I was buying “Duke of Earl” and “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” and ’ records, The Four Seasons.

But I wasn’t really particularly interested in doing it until the British Invasion happened. There weren’t that many bands in America back then. If there was a band, it was mostly an instrumental group. You went to your high school dance, it was an instrumental group, usually, and a sax player would be the leader usually and then maybe put the saxophone down for like one song where he’d sing. 

Then suddenly, here comes the Beatles. And then The Dave Clark Five and Herman’s Hermits and then The Stones and The Who and the Kinks and the Yardbirds and all of the British Invasion bands — four or five guys all singing and playing their own instruments and eventually writing their own songs, which was a major, major change. Up until then, most of the artists, with a few exceptions like Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly — the major pioneers — were [not] writing their own songs.

Keep in mind that rock wasn’t mainstream, really, until the British Invasion. Mainstream pop artists were mostly not writing their songs. So you had songwriters and arrangers and producers. It took an army to make a record in those days. Publishers were involved in all kinds of different facets of the business.

Then it all came together when you had a self-contained band like The Beatles. They just changed everything. They changed the entire configuration of the business. Technically, publishers were no longer relevant, because publishers’ main job was to expose a writer’s music to the world in the form of sheet music. They literally would publish physical music and they would make those piano rolls, back in the 1880s or whenever. They were popular.

And with a band singing their own songs — in other words, marketing themselves — the whole publishing thing would soon transform itself into mostly administration, which was collecting the music and collecting the money for these self-publishing artists. 

For our generation — and we were the luckiest generation ever — there were all kinds of teenage band activities. It wasn’t just the bars. The bar culture had bands. But before you got to the bar culture, literally teenagers, 12, 13, 14 years old, you’d go to beach clubs, you’d go to V.F.W. halls, you’d go to your high school dances, you’d go to clubs that were built for teenagers, literally teenage discotheques, as they were called before disco happened. You would go out as a kid. Your parents would drop you off, and you’d go see a band.

But it was bigger than that. The entire culture was electrified. Suddenly, our generation had a soundtrack that was really quite significant. The fifties generation, the generation before us, also had a wonderful soundtrack going on, but it seemed to be a little bit more temporary in some ways.

Our artists grew, our artists evolved. This one aspect that the Beatles brought gets underreported — and Bob Dylan was right there with them — but the Beatles actually introduced the idea of evolution in popular art, which was not a thing. Popular art was: If by some miracle you had a success, your job was to match that success as often as possible and as closely as possible.

The great example is the record called “The Twist.” And then you follow it up with “Let’s Twist Again.” (Laughs.)

Right. No shame at all!

The perfect template for what was the pop music methodology.

And for the Beatles, I think, it was just boredom because they’d been doing it so long. They had one of the longest gestation periods between starting and arriving. Only the E Street Band was longer than the Beatles, I think. It took us like seven years, but them, like five years — four or five years of working in bars, working in the clubs, absorbing all the material. In those days, they knew every song that had been recorded because there weren’t that many recorded [by] 1959. They knew every rock record that had been released.

They were playing them all over and over again and absorbing and absorbing. That’s why, when they started writing, they not only had a very high standard to live up to — which is why their songs were so good right away — but also, when they started writing, they were like, “Let’s try some new chord changes.” You know what I mean? “We’ve been doing these same chord changes for years. Let’s try some new things.”

And so it started there. All of a sudden, an interesting bridge. With songs, they could go somewhere odd, pretty early on. Then was even a little different. And then was a little different. They kept evolving almost to the end, really. And so as they grew, our generation grew with them. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful energy exchange. It was really a part of the fabric of your life.

Yes, it was a soundtrack, but it was also more than that. It was inspiration and motivation. We really, really were a music culture growing up. We didn’t have all the distractions of today. You didn’t have cell phones or computers or video games or TikTok. You didn’t have anything except the radio and three channels on TV. 

You may be even one of the people who said it, that when we, for lack of a better term, met the Beatles in ’64, they were halfway through their career as a group. We were seeing a mature group.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s why, as I go into much more detail , of course, when we saw them, it was an absolute epiphany, a world-changing event. Literally. The term gets used a lot, but this was a game-changer for real. They were so sophisticated that even though they revealed this incredible opportunity, a new world that you had no idea existed, you didn’t exactly say, “Jeez, I think I could do that.” Even though they were just 20, 21, 22 years old, the clothes were different. The hair was different. The accent, of course, their wisdom and wit. Already at that age, they were very, very experienced and very sophisticated and just perfect. The harmony was perfect, the playing was perfect.

That’s why I always credit the Rolling Stones with just about equal importance, because the Rolling Stones come four months later and they’re wearing all different things, their hair is not exactly perfect, except for Brian Jones. And they don’t have any real harmony to speak of really, at that point. They were like the first punk band and they did the same thing that punk would do, years later, by making what they were doing accessible, making it look easier than it was.

A teenager [could] say, “Well, I really don’t know if I could do that Beatles thing, but maybe I could do the Stones thing. It doesn’t look that difficult.” Of course, they were making it look a lot easier than it was.

But making it look easier was important. It was the same thing for punk, really. You listen to the Sex Pistols, and at first glance you might say, “Maybe I can do that.” But is phenomenal. It’s a phenomenal record that actually was quite produced. So the Stones were that for us.

 Like I say, the Beatles revealed a new world to us and the Rolling Stones invited us in.

I want to give you a chance to talk about the work you’re doing in schools, beginning with something you said about the program. You said, “All I wanted was for every kid in kindergarten to be able to name the four Beatles, dance to ‘Satisfaction,’ sing along to ‘Long Tall Sally’ and recite every word of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues.’ The rest will take care of itself.” Which to me is profound. But I wonder 
 

I’ll stick by that too (laughs).

How’s that working out? How has it developed from that conception?

Pretty good. Obviously, everything always goes slower than you hope. It took us a long time just to get it together to the point where I felt confident enough to go public with it, which only happened five or so years ago, after working on it for like 10 or 15 years.

It’s been a long time coming. But we have like 60,000 teachers and 200 partner schools and we’re in every state. I had the opportunity to visit one of our partner schools and, man, it was wonderful to see. I think it was the first five or six grades in this particular school. And the enthusiasm of the kids was amazing. The entire concept here was to do something that would get the kids interested and keep them interested and get them to come to school and stay in school. Judging by the enthusiasm that I saw, it really is working quite well because our whole concept begins with finding the common ground between the student and the teacher. 

This generation is only right now. It’s all very, very immediate because of technology.

You’ve got to give them a reason to not look up whatever you were telling them in 30 seconds on their device. “Why do I need you? I got this thing.” So it’s a combination of curation, of selected information that we feel is important and inspirational and motivational, and using what the kids already have, what they’ve already brought with them, which is curiosity and energy and instinct and opinions. They come to school with that, with elements of an identity. And most of our school methodology in the past has been, “Leave all that outside, O.K. Just come in as a blank slate and we’re going to fill in. We’re going to tell you what you need to learn.” And it was a classic, “Learn this now and someday you’ll use it.”

Completely irrelevant.

Over the past couple weeks, the Springsteen Archive agreed to work with you. Can you talk about what that will allow you to do that you couldn’t do before?

Well, it’s more exposure. Right now, our thing is exposure, just turning as many people on to this as we can because we know it works now.

It’s probably going to take another couple of years before we have irrefutable data. But we can just tell because we’re always improving it and correcting it. We get input all the time from our teachers. But we know it’s working. We have absolutely, across-the-board success. So now it’s just a matter of spreading this thing as widely and as quickly as we can because I believe this is going to transform the entire education system. I’m not exaggerating. That’s not hyperbole. I really feel that.

I feel our system is generally antiquated. The machine is so big and so bureaucratic, it can’t adjust fast enough to deal with this new generation. Now we’re into two or three generations of this modern technological world. Still, you can see the system is just struggling to keep up with all of its other problems. 

That’s why it was important to us to make sure we made this available for free. Because all the problems begin with, “We can’t afford it,” right? So we were like, “That’s not going to stop us and we don’t want to hear you can’t afford it — because it’s too important.” The future generation is here. We’re going to lose them. I don’t want to hear about money problems when we’re talking about future generations’ quality of life. So we made sure that it’s free for everybody. That way it can spread quite quickly.

We made sure it meets all the state standards. It’s not an after-school thing. We integrate art into the principal disciplines. We add the A of arts into the middle [of STEM], turning STEM into STEAM. We integrate the arts into each of those disciplines. 

So that’s a difference between our thing and what people think about art. We think of it in our country as a luxury item. Maybe it’s an afterschool thing or a special school you go to. I don’t think there is a word for art in the indigenous people’s language because art is integrated into everything they do. And that’s the approach we take. It plays on a different part of the brain, the more comfortable part of the brain, not the one that needs to be precise all the time. We like to dwell on the side where there’s no wrong answers. There’s no wrong answers in art, and we like to kind of hang around there, and then make people comfortable enough to deal with the more precise parts of the system. 

The last question I want to ask you: What do you see as the legacy of this program 10, 20 years from now?

Well, we keep spreading it. The legacy is the transformation of the education system. It’s the public education that we focus on. Everyone is welcome. We are interested in where most of the kids are and most of the parents are. Most of the really hard-working, underpaid teachers that can’t find enough time to do what they do and end up going out and buying pencils and paper for their classrooms.

So we see this fulfilling our three goals eventually, which is making sure that art in general stays in the DNA of the public education system. Number two, creating a methodology that works for this generation and future generations that have no patience and are a lot smarter and faster than we ever were. It needs a new methodology, and we have that. And the third thing is keeping kids in school and increasing the graduation level and reducing the dropout level, which is just intolerable and scandalous.

We really intend to change that. Because if a kid likes one classroom or one teacher, they’ll come to school. The statistics show that. We want to be that class. 

The last thing I’ll offer as an observation is: It’s interesting that somebody like you, not only an outsider, but somebody who even talks of themselves as being sort of like an outcast and ….

You can say, “Moron.” It’s OK.

Oh no! (Laughs.)

You can say even half a moron like me. I should have been a dropout myself. I get it. I know, it’s ironic, isn’t it? It is ironic, but like I say, I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the luckiest generation.

I think it’s an obligation. I really do feel it’s a responsibility for us to pass along something that was better than we had because we’ve taken all the good stuff. We’ve taken an awful lot of the good stuff, and we’re leaving them a hole in the sky and a poisoned environment and a permanent recession really — all kinds of ridiculous problems in terms of the failures of our society.

So you look around, you say, “Oh, well, what can we do? What do we have control of that we can pass along that’s an apology to the next generation?” So I’m hoping that this is one of the things, along with a couple of my radio formats [that] I hope will long outlast me and improve the quality of life for the next guy.

I mean, what else can you do? What else are we here for?

“This is a big step forward for public education,” former Los Angeles schools superintendent Austin Beutner said in a press release. “It’s the first guaranteed increase in funding for California public schools since Prop 98 was passed by voters 34 years ago.”

With widespread support, including celebrities such as Dr. Dre and Lil Baby, the measure’s 61.6% voter approval was expected.

Proposition 28, which provides funding for K-12 courses typically cut from school budgets during lean fiscal periods, won’t raise taxes. Instead, the measure creates an annual funding stream by requiring the state to direct 1% above what is legally required to spend on education for arts and music programs.

There will also be more funding set aside for public schools in low-income neighborhoods.

“A good education is the best path out of poverty for many and the promise of opportunity for all,” Beutner said.

The shouting referred to California’s Proposition 28, a ballot initiative that aims to pump at least $800 million into K-12 arts and music programs.

It comes with a pleasing selling point: It won’t increase taxes. That’s one reason no one is raising money to defeat the measure — a relief to former Los Angeles schools chief Austin Beutner, who led the effort to get the question on the ballot and donated over $4 million to the cause.

As superintendent, he and the unions often butted heads. But on that early October day, union members joined him in asking managers of a sandwich shop and a crowded breakfast joint to hang campaign signs in their windows.

“We just want to make sure people know what Prop 28 is,” said Beutner, adding he’s encouraged by the positive reception the measure has received. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had the community of California in support of public education.”

From New Mexico to Massachusetts, voters will decide on several education-related ballot initiatives when they head to the polls Nov. 8. Most propose to raise taxes for additional school funding, but others could decide if all students should get free meals or whether lawmakers can override state board policy.

The California arts measure, however, is decidedly more high profile, attracting support from some big names in the entertainment industry. To promote the initiative, Beutner shared the stage with rappers Dr. Dre and Lil Baby. In San Pedro, “Lord of the Rings” actor Sean Astin pitched in.

“Our members absolutely champion arts and music education in schools. It’s what we’ve built our life and our career on,” said Astin, representing the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. “We think every child, every student deserves [to be] exposed to the arts and music in their public school.”

‘The most impact’

Twenty-three states currently provide grant funding for arts education or have a school for the arts, according to the Arts Education Partnership, a project of the Education Commission of the States. But generally, states aren’t required to fund them, said Mary Dell’Erba, the Partnership’s assistant director. Some states fund arts efforts through license plate fees or lottery funding.

Proposition 28 is unique, she said, not just because of the large sums of money it would generate, but the priority it places on arts funding in the state budget.

Called Arts and Music in Schools, the measure would require that 1% above what the state is legally required to spend on education be directed toward the arts. In years when revenues decline, the funding wouldn’t be cut any more than the overall K-12 budget.

Eighty percent of the funds would go toward arts teachers. And while all schools would have access to the funding, 30% would target low-income schools.

To Malissa Shriver, chair of Turnaround Arts: California — a nonprofit that supports school improvement through the arts — that’s huge. When her program began, she said it was hard to find schools that met the organization’s requirement to employ credentialed art teachers.

She gave Beutner credit for “knowing how money bleeds out into administrative costs” and for designing the proposition “in such a way it can have the most impact.” Only 1% can be used for administration and the rest can go toward materials or teacher training.

She argues that along with students’ math and reading achievement, creative expression can help students regroup socially and emotionally after many months of pandemic isolation.

But even if the measure passes, it will face challenges. One is staffing.

“Just because there is a requirement that the funding support educators doesn’t mean there will be educators to hire,” Dell’Erba said.

Some editorial writers have criticized the measure as “ballot box budgeting” and said the state shouldn’t tell local school boards how to spend money.

‘Be who we want to be’

Beutner’s crusade stems partly from his own experience. A shy student in elementary school, he gained confidence after learning to play the cello in fifth grade.

“I could perform in front of thousands of people before I could speak in front of tens of people,” he said. “It all started with that sense of belonging.”

The San Pedro High 12th graders who campaigned with him that day — some dressed in cheerleading uniforms, others holding handmade signs — agreed.

Miki Vasquez, a senior, said art and music “lets us be who we want to be.”

Chris Soto said he’d take a guitar class if one were available. And Isabella Menzel, a first-time campaigner, shouted, “This is the most excited I’ve ever been.”

One student brought “Lord of the Rings” volumes for Astin to sign. After chanting with the students for a few blocks, Astin left early. Currently a graduate student at American University in Washington, studying public administration and policy, he said he had homework to do. “I have an essay due in six hours.”

Other state initiatives

While Proposition 28 might be the ballot measure with the most star power, it’s not the only education initiative to come before voters on Nov. 8. Here’s a rundown of the rest:

Colorado: The Healthy Schools Meals for All program would fully reimburse districts for offering students free breakfast and lunch, regardless of family income. It would also increase pay for school nutrition staff and offer training and equipment to make meals from scratch. To pay for the program, the initiative would cap income tax deductions for those making $300,000 or more. There is no organized opposition to the measure, but one lawmaker who voted against putting it on the ballot said he had a “fundamental problem” with subsidizing meals for students whose parents can afford to pay.

Idaho: An advisory question on the ballot asks voters whether they approve or disapprove of HB 1, a bill lawmakers passed this year that would change the tax rate structure to free up $410 million annually for public schools. The ballot measure describes the additional funding as “the single largest investment in public education in Idaho history.” According to HB 1, the outcome of the vote will guide the legislature on whether the changes become permanent. But one political scientist described the non-binding proposition as a campaign ad for Gov. Brad Little and lawmakers who supported the bill.

Massachusetts: Question 1 would amend the state constitution to tax millionaires an additional 4% above the existing 5% flat-rate income tax. According to supporters, the Fair Share Amendment would raise roughly $2 billion for public schools, higher education, road maintenance and public transportation. They argue additional revenue is needed to address educational inequities that grew because of the pandemic. The Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike Amendment argues the measure is deceptive because it would apply to one-time transactions like selling a house. They also say it would allow lawmakers to create new tax brackets and higher rates that would eventually affect the middle class.

New Mexico: Amendment 1 would set aside roughly $150 million annually from the state’s Permanent School Fund for early-childhood education and about $100 million for teacher compensation and programs serving students at risk of failure. The fund comes from oil and gas revenues and capital investment returns. The measure seeks to increase the distribution of the fund from 5% to 6.25%.

If voters approve it, the measure would need final approval from the U.S. Congress because early-childhood education was not one of the approved uses written into the federal law. There is no organized opposition to the measure, but a Republican lawmaker who voted against placing it on the ballot said withdrawing more from the fund would leave fewer resources for the state’s children.

Voters will also decide Bond Question 3, which would authorize almost $216 million in bonds for capital projects, including those at tribal schools, a child psychiatric center and an Albuquerque preschool that serves deaf children.

Rhode Island: Question 2, placed on the ballot by the state legislature, asks voters to approve $250 million in bonds for school construction and renovation. .

West Virginia: The state legislature would get final say on any rules or policies passed by the Board of Education if voters approve Amendment 4. Republicans in the legislature pushed for the measure, arguing that regulations governing schools should be left to those elected by voters, not an appointed board. But opponents, including former state Superintendent Clayton Burch and Miller Hall, former state board president, argue the proposed amendment would subject education to more partisanship and would lead to inconsistency in learning due to changes in the legislature.

As a University of Akron professor, Bolton watched her students dig for inspiration and purpose amid online classes and an isolated college experience.

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As head of the Lima Symphony Orchestra, Brown-Ellis watched 75 musicians adapt and find ways to make ends meet while the audience moved from the seats in front of them to their computers at home.

But what they didn’t see was a dimming of the need for arts in education and in the community navigating a world without public events.

“Arts are not just leisure activities, arts are fundamental parts of our society and our economic prosperity,” Brown-Ellis said.

Brown-Ellis and Bolton are two of the newest members of the Ohio Citizens for the Arts’ Board of Directors, with Brown-Ellis serving as president of the board. The OCA is an advocacy organization that lobbies the state General Assembly and Congress to support arts in the state.

Bolton, who teaches 20th and 21st Century American literature and specializes in African American literature, saw the impact of the arts in one particular student, who said coming back to in-person gave her a new purpose, and even used a painting to express her feelings about the readings in Bolton’s class.

“There’s so much exhaustion (from the pandemic),” Bolton said. “I don’t know when it clicks or when it happens, but I think art
has this way, no matter where we are, of finding us and pulling us in, and making us realize what matters.”

For some people, it’s the tradition of going to the Nutcracker Ballet, for others it’s learning about the Harlem Renaissance. But for many, the arts represent a return to normalcy, something that the state and federal governments need to realize helps employers attract workers and keep residents in Ohio.

“It’s a way to look to your left or your right and you’re connected with our communities and with our people,” Bolton said.

Brown-Ellis is the perfect example of that concept. Formerly an international financial attorney in a different state, she moved back to her hometown of Lima looking for a marketing job while waiting to take the Ohio bar.

When the Lima Symphony Orchestra took her in, she fell in love and left the legal work behind.

“We have the opportunity to make an impact here,” Brown-Ellis said. “Because it is a small town, there is so much opportunity and obligation to bring performing arts to the seven-county radius.”

The arts “were given a lifeline” with pandemic relief funds coming to the arts industry, which Brown-Ellis said still has one of the highest unemployment rates.

In November 2020, the state put $20 million in toward the arts, considered a temporary stop-gap.

That lifeline came after $74 billion in estimated monthly losses for “creative occupations”, according to a 2020 report by the Brookings Institution. The OCA released a report in 2018 saying creative occupations accounted for $41 billion in state economic activity, and 290,000 jobs per year.

This month, the arts industry got a total of $1,065,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, in the form of 45 grants. Three of those grants went to Ohio research facilities “to analyze the value and/or impact of the arts,” according to the NEA.

MetroHealth received $85,000 in a research grant, along with Case Western Reserve University, who received $75,000. Ohio State University received $30,000 in research grants in the arts.

The future of the Ohio economy is beginning to depend on the arts and humanities, according to those teaching the students going into the workforce. Bolton said she’s heard from people in the financial and insurance sectors who are looking to connect with humanities students.

Bolton argues the creativity and critical thinking that comes from arts education brings different voices to the table that can adapt as the state and country does.

“When you’re part of our country and you’re concerned about the well-being of your state, it behooves us to do what we can to take care of our people,” Bolton said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

She was inspired by her uncle, who was incarcerated and had confided in her how isolating being in prison could be. Thompson used to perform with her cello in a juvenile detention center when she was younger, but she wanted to get incarcerated people involved in the community of music makers.

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That’s how Chatham Strings was born.

For about two years, Chatham Strings, an orchestra made up of donated violins, cellos and one viola helped incarcerated children explore creativity, teamwork and accomplishment. COVID-19 stalled the program in 2020, and then Thompson graduated from her program and moved to California.

She hopes, however, that the impact has remained.

“There’s potential benefits to music involvement,” Thompson said, “like recovering from traumatic experiences in life, fostering a positive experience with learning and new experiences, education, and also developing interpersonal skills that are so essential to life.”

The results of Chatham Strings, which Thompson for a doctor of musical arts degree at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, are all anecdotal and correlatory, Thompson said. But some children said being involved in the program helped them try new experiences — even if they were told they were never going to succeed.

“They were discouraged from learning new things, that was part of their past,” Thompson said, “When they were given the opportunity to try something new, and they started enjoying it, and noticing a bit of success, they started saying, ‘Oh, why am I limiting myself?’”

Maybe success on the cello could transfer to success in beautician school, or math class, Thompson said.

Transformation through music

Chatham Strings was one look into the transformational powers of music, which improve cognitive skills, health and well-being.

Just 40 miles away from Chatham Youth Development Center, Durham-based has boasted that participants in its out-of-school music program for students in lower-income areas have higher school attendance rates and improved academic performance. The program is based on the model originally launched in Venezuela for children in impoverished neighborhoods to learn music.

More important than test scores, though, is the joy of music, said , Kidznotes’ executive director.

“It is not something that stays,” Tucker said. “But it is something that hopefully we all experienced — at least once in our lives, at least once a week, once a day — but you’ve got to know what it is and recognize it when it comes because it dissipates.”

Tucker has spoken with countless parents who no longer play an instrument, but they can’t forget the first time they held one, how special it was.

Thompson recalled a similar reverence from the children in Chatham Strings, who, even in the midst of an argument with other students, set aside their instruments.

But is music special? What makes it different from other activities?

Nothing magical

According to , professor emeritus at UNCG, there is something unique, but nothing magical about music.

“The elements of all the bits and pieces probably can be found in other things as well, for different children, different individuals,” Hodges said,

Playing music can activate different parts of the brain, Hodges said. For example, when you play a violin, your right hand, which controls the bow, controls the rhythm, while your left hand, which presses the notes on the strings, controls the melody.

After doing that activity over and over again, it creates a permanent imprint on the brain.

That kind of coordination can be found in many activities, Hodges noted. He rejects ideas that music has a mystical, uncanny quality, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something important and uniquely human about making music.

Societies across the globe incorporate music into their daily lives, albeit in different ways. It is perhaps the human in music that makes it feel so special.

“Every musical style, if it’s your favorite, regardless of what it is,” Hodges said, “activates the part of the brain that says ‘Hey, I am a human being and this is how I feel about my humanity.’”

In recent years, research made possible through new imaging techniques that can show what the brain is doing in real-time has shown that music definitely has some neurological benefit. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researcher John Burdette found that just listening to one’s favorite music changed the connections between auditory brain areas and the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s “responsible for memory and social emotional consolidation.”

Other research has explored how people with dementia are , despite profound memory loss, and a recent study found that people who started music training when young had in the auditory regions of their brains.

Healing through music

Thompson taught her students how to compose music in addition to playing, allowing them to further express themselves.

Incarcerated children are a, defined as potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

that even as children accumulate such ACEs as the incarceration or loss of a parent, witnessing violence or having a close relative with mental illness, it puts them at higher risk of poor educational attainment, substance use and even physical health problems such as cancer in adulthood.

It can be hard for traumatized people to open up, Hodges said. Music can help.

One student in Chatham Strings composed a piece about the loss of a parent. The orchestra performed that piece, “Motherly Love.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etx6Y9LiERo

Encouraging reliability and reliance on others

Playing music and being part of an ensemble involves coordination and teamwork, but it also requires expression — as an individual and as a group.

“Everybody plays an important role,” Hodges said. “Not everybody can play first as well. So it’s a tricky balance.”

Tucker said her organization, Kidznotes, works to create a “community through music.”

“The dynamics of orchestra works is very similar to how you create an intentional community outside of the program,” she said.

Members of an orchestra support each other the same way they might support their neighbors or family members outside the orchestra. Just like in life, orchestra is more than just “playing your part,” she said.

In Chatham Strings, Thompson said students quickly realized that if one person missed class, they wouldn’t sound as good. Students then felt a responsibility not only to themselves or Thompson, but to the group itself.

“There’s a sense of responsibility,” Thompson said. “Of course, did that make them always make the right decisions? No. Does it do for any of us? But it had impact on them wanting to be responsible and be a part.”

The pandemic has affected how both groups feel that community through music.

Kidznotes was forced to go online as schools went online, and for some children that meant attending their group violin lessons from the McDonald’s parking lot because that was where there was Wi-Fi, Tucker said.

For children in school during COVID, life is hard and unpredictable, Tucker said.

The pandemic changed the way we feel community through music. But music still found a way.

As lockdowns began in countries around the world, videos of people playing trumpet or singing from their apartments circled around social media.

In the end, it comes down to joy.

That joy that music is so apt to bring is still retrievable despite the world. And that joy, that meaningful experience is something that anybody can experience, no matter your age, your cognitive ability or your numbers, Hodges said.

This originally appeared at  and is published here in partnership with the .

At , based in the department of psychology at Harvard University, researchers are trying to find out how and why the human mind is designed in such a way that we all hear, understand and respond to music. Researchers do experiments with people all over the world from many different social, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds; the lab also hosts the project, a large body of studies and recordings of music throughout the world.

We’ve all heard the old adage, “Music is the universal language.” The Music Lab has plenty of data to back that up: nearly 5,000 descriptions of songs and song performances from 60 human societies. And babies have been a big help, at least with one piece of the puzzle.

In a study led by Music Lab researchers Constance M. Bainbridge, a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Mila Bertolo, a Harvard researcher, 144 infants aged 2 months to 14 months were monitored as they listened to lullabies and non-lullabies they had never heard before. The researchers fitted the babies with heart rate and skin monitors — like a baby Fitbit, they say — and tracked the babies’ eye movements as they listened to the songs. Each of the songs was played for 14 seconds.

The songs were all in unfamiliar languages from 16 cultures, half of them sung by men and half by women, all without instrumentation. Whether the baby was hearing an Iroquois lullaby sung by a woman or one from the Ona people of Patagonia sung by a man, the babies’ heart rates went down, their skin’s electrodermal activity decreased, and their pupils became smaller — all indicators of relaxation. This response didn’t occur when the babies heard the other songs, a finding that indicates that lullabies’ calming effects might be innate to human beings, not learned.

“The fact that we saw the effect very young and that it was constant between the ages of 2 months and 14 months is a pretty surprising finding for something we didn’t need to learn. It’s the fact of having a human brain that has us perceive certain sounds in certain ways,” she says.

When the songs were played for the babies’ parents, they too were able to predict which of the songs would calm their babies, distinguishing lullabies from love songs, healing songs or songs intended to inspire listeners to dance. (Listen to the songs .)

As is often the case with research, the lullaby project has brought up even more questions than it’s answered at this point, and it’s too early in the project to come to solid conclusions. Though they can’t say for sure, the researchers speculate on how the role of lullabies in human society evolved. Singing to a child requires focus and awareness, they say, and that could signal safety.

“You need to be focused and have your attention on that infant,” Bainbridge says. “If you’re singing to the child, that means you aren’t communicating to other adults or responding to potential dangers. So, it might be an honest signal of parental investment in the welfare of the child.”

For parents who might have performance anxiety about the idea of singing to their babies, the researchers offer an encouraging word: You don’t have to be a professional musician to sing your baby to the Land of Nod.

“It’s really the kind of music that everyone engages in,” says Bertolo, “so even if someone thinks they can’t carry a tune in a bucket, they’re probably comparing themselves to a performer. They’re probably capable of much more music than they realize, so I would think their musical ability is not a worry.”

The researchers have a paper in the works that looks at what elements in lullabies drive the relaxation response. Does it have to do with the melody, smaller intervals between notes, a particular rhythmic profile and more repetition? Lullabies are recognized globally as different from other kinds of songs and the researchers are hot on the trail of why.

And from that question, another arises: If a certain element — the melody, say — sets the lullaby apart and the scientists manipulate the songs to make them even more melodic in that specific way, will that make the infants even more relaxed.

It stands to reason that a smooth tempo is part of the equation.

“With other songs, you might hear a surge in volume at the onset, or emphasis on a particular word,” Bainbridge says. “With dance songs, you need to have something that each listener can reliably track so they can move to the beat. And love songs can be quite all over the place, with really dramatic jumps and volumes. But with lullabies, you don’t want to startle the infant, so generally there’s a nice, gliding melody and their rhythm is very smooth.”

The Natural History of Song’s ethnographic record indicates that lullabies are a vocal form of music, as opposed to being primarily instrumental.

“This is pure speculation at this point,” Bainbridge says, “but I would imagine that because it lacks human touch, instrumental music wouldn’t be such a signal that there’s caregiving or safety available. As adults we all experience that there are some songs that get us hyped up or songs that soothe us, so I imagine there’s at least a little of that effect. But I imagine the human touch figures in (to lullabies’ soothing quality).”

The researchers are looking at whether there is a health benefit to lullabies and whether training parents to sing more lullabies and introduce more music into the home might translate long term to having better health outcomes for both parent and child.

They’re also investigating whether lullabies foster a child’s social intuitions relating to caregivers. If the child sees an adult singing to a different infant, will they look to that caregiver to attend to them when they get upset, or would they perceive another adult as equally likely to come take care of them?

Again, this inquiry goes to the evolutionary function of music. If it is a universal language — and it sure seems to be—the message of lullabies the world over is some version of, “You can wind down now and close those baby eyes of yours. I got you, Boo.”