Speech- Andrew Collins

We've all heard the phrase “laughter is the universal language,” and we all know that to be true. Laughter is recognizable despite which language or culture it comes from, along with other simple information such as basic emotion. Beyond that, however, laughter is much too limited to be a true language, however universal it may be. Fortunately, we have a much more suitable medium for a universal language: music.

Music is able to express a much wider variety of emotions and statements. Music can tell the stories of the great tragedies in ways that no other medium can. This semester, our band played Peterloo Overture, the story of the Peterloo Massacre. This expertly crafted overture tells the story of a peaceful protest for government reform, violently interrupted by a calvary. Listeners at our concert were taken on an emotional journey that guided them through the initial peace, terrible sorrows, and eventual triumph of the survivors of the Massacre. None of these emotions could be expressed so strongly through any other language, and in that way music is more effective than even conventional language.

But how, you may ask, can music be a universal language with obstacles to some individual’s perception of it? While being deaf may be seen as a large obstacle to using music as a language, some of Beethoven’s best works came from his later years, during which he was almost completely deaf. For Beethoven, music was extremely useful as a communication method, especially when he had lost most of his hearing.

The concept of tone deafness has been tossed around, and would seemingly be an insurmountable obstacle for music being a universal language. But as Benjamin Zander points out in his Ted Talk on the subject, tone deafness, if it were real, would be much more than just an inability to hear music. Tone deafness would prevent us from interpreting emotion in someone’s voice, or deciphering the origin of an accent, Zander notes. He then uses an example on his piano to show that we all can hear a resolution in music before it is played.

As with many other languages, the language of music has many dialects. Each dialect represents a community of individuals with at least one thing in common. While the stereotypical 80’s high school scene may be just a little bit hyperbolized, it does accurately show the bonding ability of music, and the sense of community within genres.

Perhaps most importantly, music is a wonderful development tool for almost any useful skill set that you can imagine. According to the National Association for Music Education, learning music teaches kids a host of complementary skills that can be used for other pursuits in their life. The preparation and performance of an improvised jazz solo is a great example of many of these skills. When preparing, the soloist must exhibit teamwork to learn to communicate with the rhythm section, who will be giving him his backgrounds, providing the foundation for his solo. He must then think creatively to come up with ideas that work well with the song. Once he has done this, he must learn to refine his unfinished product into a more performance ready solo. Through it all, he must demonstrate discipline as he goes through no doubt endless repetitions

yet still has to give every rep his best effort.

Once our hypothetical soloist is ready for his performance, he must use two more skills to create a top level performance. He will no doubt have nervousness and fear leading up to the performance, and he will learn to curb those as he progresses as a musician. And although he may be improvising his solo, he still needs to use his memory to access the ideas and refinements that he has practiced so many times. The preparation and performance of this and many other types of music trains students in basic skills that will be extremely useful to them later in life.

Music has been proven to increase the success of students as they leave high school and enter the real world. Music develops the part of the brain associated with reasoning from an early age, reasoning being a very important skill to possess. Music also teaches the ability to endure tediousness by being able to see the outcome more clearly. When preparing a difficult piece, repetition after repetition becomes extraordinarily mundane, but once the end result is achieved, the mundane is learned to be appreciated. One of the most important abilities of a modern adult is the ability to relax and relieve stress. When a student has experience with music, they can learn to really sit back in a composition and leave their troubles at the door.

As well as these more broad skills, music teaches skills specific to language and mathematics. Music teaches students better auditory recognition, which becomes extremely useful in interpreting the speech and language of others. In the realm of mathematics, music develops spatial reasoning, useful in higher level mathematics, as well as pattern recognition, which is useful in all levels of mathematics and in most english classes.

Finally, music is a great builder of character. In many cases, the extremely self-conscious fifth-grader is transformed into the extremely self-confident twelfth-grader through their journey in musical education. Performance after performance radically increases the self confidence of the student on their instrument and subsequently as a person. And of course, music teaches students to be creative. No matter what type of music a student learns, they will increase their musical vocabulary and will become more creative as a result.

In this time of budget cuts left and right in our school systems, music programs are often the first considerations. But as large amounts of people don’t hesitate to inform these school systems, cutting music education simply doesn’t make sense. Teaching students the universal language of music teaches them countless skills that will be used throughout their life, whether or not they stay in music.

Sources

"Peterloo Massacre." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.

"Ludwig Van Beethoven." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.

"20 Important Benefits of Music In Our Schools." – National Association for Music Education (NAfME). 21 July 2014. Web. 15 Dec. 2014.