Music in Our Schools

Celebrating Music Education at Messiah and Beyond

BY HALEY MONG

Music appears throughout all of our lives whether we were sung a lullaby as a baby, played in the fourth-grade band or continue to create new Spotify playlists. Known as “Music in our Schools Month,” March not only opens us up to spring, but initiates the celebration of the unique intersectionality of music and our education.

Starting as a one-day celebration in 1973 and extending into a week, “Music in our Schools Month” progressed to include the whole month by March 1985. With an increase in budget cuts in schools, “Music in our Schools Month” aimed to articulate the significance of all children receiving music learning opportunities. Celebrations during the month include local performances and songwriting as well as music teachers speaking about the benefits of music education.

March 2020 Junior music education major Hannah Weller desires to be a music teacher in response to the lack of musical care in her own school growing up. She considers music education a necessity for all ages.

“Music education, more than any other subject, teaches us what it is to be human,” Weller said.

When other disagreements separate us, music mends. Senior music composition major Sam Brown discovered music through his family, learning the guitar from his dad and watching his parents sound check every Sunday morning. Now a guitar teacher, Brown said, “[Music] goes past the line of culture, goes past the line of religion, and it goes past the line of language.”

As humans, we desire life-giving connections. Music provides us with a means to connect with and understand others. Weller emphasizes music’s contribution towards unity, saying that music is for everybody.

Nelson Rockefeller, former United States Vice President and an advocate for “Music in our Schools Month,” highlighted the month as a time for music to mend intellectual and emotional forces and “strengthen international and racial bonds.” “[It] uniquely allows us to interact with different cultures and time periods, and with people that are different from us,” Weller said.

Intrinsically flowing through us, music influences our ability to reveal a sense of grace and humanity. Music professor Dr. Timothy Dixon refined his musical abilities while teaching music to students and conducting diverse groups and ensembles. His biggest inspiration derives from seeing his students achieve their musical goals.

“It is built in us to do music and be musical,” Dixon said.

“Everyone has the ability to develop or appreciate music in some way,” Brown said. Education allows us to take our inherent sense of music even farther.

A Pearl drum kit in a High Center rehearsal room, overlooking the Yellow Breeches.

Photography by Cassidy Barlock

There are many methods to teaching and learning music. Brown even argues that there is no such thing as bad music because music is anything we make it. As long as we are music-making, we are building our musical skills.

One of the best ways to learn music is to listen to it. Growing up listening to music gives us a grasp on what music can be to us personally. Weller said we become increasingly familiar with music and can “contribute a lot more musically” to ourselves and others. Improvisation is a method that promotes instinctual and spontaneous music-making. Having fallen in love with music through improvisation, Brown explains that this technique teaches us to be vulnerable in our musical abilities.

“[It allows us to] get rattled in the musical moment,” Dixon said. “[And] to be fully present with the people [we are] with and making really good music with.”

Weller said musical participation sanctions us to “partake in self-expression.” Whether through writing our own music or listening to others, music gives us a deeper sense of ourselves.

The Messiah Music Department is a close community. Even lockers aren't immune to becoming messageboards!

Photography by Cassidy Barlock

Learning music also improves our cognitive and social abilities as well as the expression of emotions.

“[Music gives us the] ability to experience and express things emotionally and not through words,” Dixon said.

Dixon said that music is the closest thing to spirituality for people who are not part of an organized religious group. He said music is the “experience of being alive.”

Weller adds that music is “an escape from the mundane,” elevating us from our circumstances.

When asked to describe the celebration of music in a few words, Brown, Weller and Dixon decided upon these: unifying, intimate, intentional, life-giving, hopeful, imperative, listen and express.

“Music in our Schools Month” celebrates the growth of musical opportunities in schools and in our lives so we can experience the hopeful and life-giving powers of music. Weller encourages everyone to carry a positive experience with music and become advocates of its unifying and expressing form.

“We can learn to appreciate music by thinking about what it would be like if it didn’t exist,” Brown said.

The High Center is still and silent, and many lockers lie empty without students on campus. But music majors and educators still keep their skills sharp at home.

Photography by Cassidy Barlock