Making Music Meaningful

I started writing songs forty years ago when I was 9. I remember one of the first efforts was called ‘Frank’ and it was about a man who owned a bank. I am not sure where the inspiration came from but I co-wrote it with my good friend Tracy (who is now a professor) and our friends would make a ring around us with their skipping ropes in the playground, encouraging us to perform. After this big hit, we wrote a string of songs, including ‘Peter, Aren’t you coming Home now?’ and ‘In the Olden Days’, which was about a sister with a blister on her toe.

I remember five key things from this time:

• Writing songs was fun

Writing a song with a friend was connecting

• We loved performing and sharing these songs with others

• Singing them (repeatedly) to ourselves and others brought us joy

• I wanted to write songs that were more meaningful

We had so much fun creating these songs but I find it interesting that each song I subsequently wrote, I would find ways to make it more personal to me or that it would mean something to another person.

At the same time, I was also listening a lot to Kate Bush whose songs affected me deeply. Deep listening was one of my favourite pastimes - I could listen to her for hours singing about the wiley windy moors. I was also extremely moved by the hymns we sang at school, partly because of how the words and melodies made me feel, and partly because I loved singing together. I felt like I was connected to everyone and everything.

As I continued with my songwriting efforts, and as I navigated through my teenage years, I noticed that my songs were starting to become increasingly meaningful. I wrote songs about friendship, love, a complex song about fairies (my friends still won’t let this one go) and wistful songs about how the silver moon made me feel. I needed to have more meaning and the more I applied this need, the more the songs helped me at different times in my life and eventually others, as I would share and record them or teach them to our friendship group and we’d sing them at school events and to raise money for charity.

Fast forward to my teaching years and I find that sharing this songwriting journey with my primary students inspires them on their own journey. I actually perform ‘Frank’ although I add the ukulele chords in.

We also talk a lot about the purpose of music and how to make it meaningful - and of course, this raises great discussion and questions, which we explore freely. We discuss questions such as:

Who are we writing this song for?

How do we want them to feel? (relaxed, inspired, joyful, reflective)

How can we use the power of song to share about topics we care about and want others to care about too?

The idea at first is to get them creating. Some get hung up on spelling or grammar so we remove those obstacles. Some want to write their ideas on paper and I share with them how creativity can be messy and disordered.They ask for erasers and instead, I encourage them to just cross things out and make it a working document.

During this process of songwriting, which takes several weeks and sometimes months, I then share with them songs that I have written over the last decade, and we start to learn them and keep on discussing how we can make music meaningful.

I share how much I loved ‘Frank’ but how I then wanted to write songs that I felt expressed more about emotions or about a topic that I cared deeply about. Sharing my own songs and also others that I love - for example, ‘I am the Earth’ by Glyn Lehmann, and singing them together, models how a song can make us feel.

The children definitely understand the difference between singing a song which is fun, say for example, a nonsense song, or an action song such as ‘Baby Shark’ or ‘Agadoo’, which they enjoy for a time - and one that is more meaningful. It always seems to come back to our need for connection, to others and to our emotions - and this is not to discount all the fun songs out there - I am looking forward to releasing ‘Bom Bom Bom Chihuahua’ and I hope that many children love it and that it goes viral and gets on everybody’s last nerve! There is space for everythingbut there is also a balance that is needed and children want and crave that balance.

When we sing songs that have more depth, I see it in how children sing the song, how they interact and also how their behaviors change.

In one school, ‘Courage’ was our virtue theme for the month. I said I would write a song and I knew I wanted it to be about more than picking up a spider or taking your first dive - even though these are important and meaningful actions to some. I wanted the children to be able to sing words that they could take into their heart and that would help them with every day situations, so a song was created and the main theme was that it takes courage to do the right thing, to stand up for others and to ‘be the person I know I can be’.

The first part of ‘Be Brave’ goes like this:

"When I look up and see

The path is hard to find

I take a deep breath

And I count to 3

And I try to reach up high"

I usually get our choir to sing this first part as solos and we talk about the song first, discussing what it means to be brave, what it looks like in action and always trying to go deeper into the thoughts that come up and to really explore them. The children always appreciate this. It is tangible! They feed back how this song makes them feel - which is not just about the lyrics but also the melody, how we sing it, our intention behind it when we sing. We talk about songs being a gift for others, how we can sing as a service and how it will affect not only ourselves but the listener will also take it into their heart and be affected by it too.

The build up to the chorus goes:

"I’m brave I can climb up the highest mountain

Brave, I can swim in the deepest sea

But the one thing I need courage for

Is to be the person I know I can be"

I have noticed that when children (ages ranging from 5 -11 years) sing this song, in a range of schools and countries, that they nearly all have the same reaction. They report having a deep connection with the lyrics, and that the song makes them feel emotional and connected.

It is no surprise to me that children feel this way about music. I have always felt the same way about songs and pieces of music since I can remember and I wonder if you do too? However, in order to get to this point, I feel that we need that time to connect with the song which is why we spend weeks working on songs and why we spend a lot of time listening and reflecting.

When I listen to music, I often I have a bigger experience that I couldn’t explain or adequately verbalize when I was five years old. I feel like the songs are speaking to my soul, that I am connected to the universe when listening, I feel empowered, protected and a huge rush of happy hormones. I never felt anything like this before.

It is becoming increasingly evident that music can influence us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I was observed once during a music session and the report came back stating, ‘There was a tangible spiritual element to the children’s learning.’ Reading this made me do a double-take. Something, that I often felt during music sessions, was felt by someone observing me. Sometimes, with music, I can often feel that the song or experience belongs to me and me alone.

The point is, music is here for the whole world to enjoy, None of us ‘own’ it - we may adopt different ways of sharing or teaching it and we may swear by a particular method or philosophy behind it; but when we start to truly understand the wider benefits of playing an instrument, singing in a choir, class, ensemble or assembly, we can see that music is here as a tool to consistently and effectively help children (and adults) to feel a strong sense of connectedness, which for many, often has that aforementioned tangible spiritual dimension - or something that many feel they cannot describe. One student explained to me that when we sang a particular song, he felt like that he was connected to everything in the universe! How powerful is that?!

There are so many articles, papers and books published now about the power of music but to recap here, the question as to why children want music with meaning?

From my observations, I would say it always comes back to accessibility - that they take ownership, not just being passive listeners but it becomes a bigger experience for them, which in turn, will eventually help them to form their own deeper ideas when it comes to songwriting and composing.

To finish, I heard some children talking in the playground, months after we’d been learning the ‘Be Brave’ song in school. They were trying to solve a friendship challenge and one of the children quoted a part of the song as a way to overcome the difficulty. Seeing how music can traverse beyond the learning part and how it fits into hearts, minds and action, to me, is the proof that children need these meaningful songs in their lives.

Victoria Jane Leith currently teaches primary music in an international school in Japan. She is the founder of Little Song Music-Makers.

The Be Brave song is currently Song of the Month on littlesong.me - with a tutorial video, lyrics and chords!