Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sarah Bost
June 7, 2016
MUSIC 512
Its 3:00 on a sunny, breezy afternoon in mid-May, 2016; one of those perfect blue-sky
white-cloud days that is Seattles best-kept secret. Preschoolers at the Discovery School are
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seated on the stairs of the concrete playground, fueling up on snacks before their afternoon play
time. They take their final bites of graham crackersand theyre off! Speeding around the
playground, flapping their arms, shouting with glee, entering imaginary worlds just steps from
bustling urban traffic with squealing brakes, speed-walking pedestrians, city buses, and sidewalk
sweepers. A few feet from their fenced-in realm sits an ethnographer on a black iron public
bench, taking in the sounds of their play. They are making it up as they gobut what does it all
mean?
Musicking
Christopher Small believes that music ought to be a verbto music is to take part, in
any capacity, in a musical performance. He coined the term musicking and defines it on a
spectrum which includes Western art music performances, which musicians tend to uphold as the
highest form of musical performance. He proposes that all activity related to music is musicking
listening, dancing, practicing, rehearsing, performing, and any humanly organized sounds
that are produced, and the space in which they are produced (1999).
The children at the Discovery School are spontaneously musicking in their natural
environment, whether they know it or not. The ethnographer knows this, and this study seeks to
explore their specific styles of musicking, to reveal themes of their musicking, and to interpret
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Each child racing around the playground contributes to the polyphony of sounds by using
his or her innate instrument, the voice. These three- and four-year-olds seem to feel most
(Schleuter & Schleuter, 1985), termed musical approximations by Burton (2015). The
ethnographer has recorded these musical approximations and notes that they are largely non-
pitched.
A boy stands atop the playground equipment, surveying his kingdom, and repeatedly
chants:
Another boy, perhaps his friend, walks the perimeter of the playground, counting his steps with a
cheerful:
Kids rhythmically count each ball as they place it in a bin after a group game:
Vocally accenting beats two and four produce a rhythmic grooveonce kids get started, they
repeat their chant over and over until they find a fun distraction. One only has to wait a moment
before hearing the next improvised rhythmic snippet: a child sitting amongst a group of his peers
sneezes, and the group transforms the sound into a chant on repeat:
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A fun sound to imitate, for sure! While most of this groups musicking revolves around chants,
there was one girl who stole the show with her rendition of a sol-mi callingshe stood on the
steps as if they were her stage, holding a jacket in each hand and twirling them around her, and
After a bit of free play, the four teachers round up the students and explain the rules of a
four-team game. Its a race against the clock as one member from each team carries a ball and
places it in a bin, then runs back to tag their next team member in the relay. Not a musical game
by any means, but these little musicians invent rhythmic cheers (chants in spirited disguise) to
When the cheering shifts to another teammate with a shorter or longer name, the rhythm of the
Orff calls this the natural progression: children proceed from speech to rhythm to song.
Children rarely do one without pairing it with another. Any of the aforementioned musickings
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could easily be written off as meaningless without understanding the context in which they are
produced. Each preschool-aged child is a vocabulary magnet, picking up new words every day
and trying them out. Barker states, It is not enough for children just to hear language; they must
also interact with itchildren find ways to make language pleasurable and fun to speak (1982).
words. Children learn language through imitation and repetition, much like how they learn
music. These improvised chants are rhythmic interpretations of their hard-earned language
Young children lean on their ability to accurately perform vocal chants. They are still
growing, and it is difficult for children ages three and four to accurately produce clean rhythmic
content by clapping or stompingthey become accustomed to these actions by 1st and 2nd grades
Small asks, What is the function of music in human life? One can apply this question to
the children of the Discovery Schoolhow does music function in their lives? At least
according to this observation time period, it is the vehicle for their language practice. Children at
this age are beginning to learn syntax; in musical terms, this means they are exploring the rhythm
of words, the meter of sentences, the phrasing together of these parts of speech. They are
whatever is in their environment. If they are in a space which contains musical instruments, they
will pluck, strike, strum, and shake their way through an impromptu performance. If they find
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themselves on a playground intended for music-making (with equipment such as wind chimes,
Freenotes mallet percussion installments, various outdoor drums, etc.), then the musicking is the
priority of play. These particular preschoolers made musical offerings using only their voices,
because it was what they had where they wereit was an accompaniment to other activities.
The structured game facilitated by the teachers was a surprise activity (free play was
expected for afterschool playground time). This decision indirectly influenced childrens
musicking; without making the call to play an organized game with teams, it is doubtful that the
spirited cheers would have been created. Perhaps other rhythmickings would have arisen, but
this special flavor of chant was fortuitous. The spontaneous music conformed to the activity,
which may be the case when other activities are imposed upon children. Childrens spontaneous
music-making sprouts in the least likely places like a weed rising up through a crack in their
concrete playground.
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Note:
References
Barker, P. (1982). Children's chants. Day Care and Early Education, 10(1), 32-35.
Burton, S. (2015). Making music mine: The development of rhythmic literacy. Music Education
Research, 1-10.
Schleuter, Stanley L., & Schleuter, Lois J. (1985). The Relationship of Grade Level and Sex
Differences to Certain Rhythmic Responses of Primary Grade Children. Journal of
Research in Music Education, 33(1), 23-29.
Small, C. (1999). Musicking the meanings of performing and listening. A lecture. Music
Education Research, 1(1), 9-22.
St. John, Patricia A. (2006). Finding and Making Meaning: Young Children as Musical
Collaborators. Psychology of Music, 34(2), 238-261.