The Importance of the Arts

Hi everyone and welcome to this month’s blog post!  Today I want to write about why the arts are so important, especially from a music point of view.  Long gone are the days where every household had a piano in their house, every family member could play at least one instrument and sing-a-longs around the piano were a popular form of entertainment.  However, music is still a critical part of humanity, there hasn’t been a culture ever discovered where music and movement weren’t part of their society.  
 
So how does music benefit us?  It entertains us, who doesn’t love a good rock concert or classical symphony?  We are so used to music being part and parcel with films that it would sound really weird if there was no soundtrack (go and watch Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds' for example).  Most computer games have music and some people just need a radio on in the background as part of their day.  But that’s not all music’s good for.
 
Music education and children
Music education is held by many to be important to children’s development.  There is a kindergarten in Berlin, that for 10 years its motto has been “Education through music, not musical education” (Musikkindergarten Berlin 2015).  Not only are students gaining knowledge and a love/appreciation of music, but also they are learning akin to a second language and skills that transcend music; such as attention span, memorisation (which we seem to be losing in the age of the smart phone), logic, (some) arithmetic, pattern recognition, hand/eye coordination etc as well as a sense of self-worth and an improved self-esteem.  Under the right guidance, singing and listening can help speech development; music, rhythm and movement foster gross and fine motor skills; experiencing sound and acoustic properties can lead to interest in the natural sciences; and, music overall can help counting, structural recognition and social competences (Uibel 2012).   Adults who learn an instrument in later life are keen students, eager to learn a new skill and keep their minds active.  To have the skills to play a musical instrument (or to sing) can only enrich life.
 
Children who learn to play an instrument or learn to sing appear to have an edge over children who don’t.  Researchers are cautiously optimistic about what the study of music can or can’t do for other academic areas.  Blanket statements such as “music makes you smarter” are absurd (Hodges 2000) and could jeopardise the importance of the field (Demorest 2000).   The study of SAT score results between American students who studied music and those who didn’t were inconclusive (Vaughn 2000) and the study of college students whose performance of a single spatial reasoning task improved after listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos (K. 448), (dubbed “the Mozart Effect”) was narrowly interpreted and unable to be replicated (Demorest 2000).  However, more recent studies have shown that students who have studied music for the long-term do better when tested for abstract geometry (Spelke 2008), fine motor and auditory discrimination skills (Schlaug 2005) and linguistic structures (Altenmüller 2012).  Anecdotally, students who have been observed participating in primary school syllabus musical training for at least one year over a 30-year period developed longer attention spans, increased self-discipline, memory performance and pattern recognition.
 
Music is also used to guide young people away from crime.  Developed in 1975, José Antonio Abreu and his friends created the El Sistema project in Venezuela, to give the lower socio-economic youth a more attractive alternative to gangs, drugs and violence.  From humble beginnings in an underground garage to headquarters at Centro de Acción Social por la Música in Caracas (Majno 2012), the El Sistema concept has launched world-wide, including Australia (Sistema Australia 2012).  There is also continued research into the positive effects of music and youth development (Barrett 2015).
 
Music and health benefits
There have also been some astounding discoveries in music therapy, with therapists working with dementia patients and sufferers of Parkinson’s disease.  Playing music to these patients seems to light up parts of the brain that gives them back some lucidity and motor skills that that had been lost to them through the disease.  Have a look at this ABC Catalyst episode called ‘The Power of Music on the Brain – Dementia and Parkinson’s’.  I’m willing to bet that we will discover that music will help us so much more in life if we just keep looking and investing in these areas.
 
So when a government or a school cuts creative arts funding and curriculums, this is a terrible thing!  When gigging musicians have to have a day-job just to bring in enough money to pay the bills, and where a pandemic like Covid-19 can almost completely decimate an industry, these are things that, as a society, we should be doing our utmost to build back up, so as to have music as a really big part of our lives.  
 
Anyway, that’s it for now, thanks for reading and I will see you next month. Bye for now!

References
ABC Catalyst, 'The Power of Music on the Brain - Dementia and Parkinson's' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnUSNbqtVJI

Altenmüller, E. et al, ‘Introduction to The Neurosciences and Music IV: Learning and Memory’ [2012] (1252) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Barrett, Margaret S. and Bond, Nigel, ‘Connecting through music” The contribution of a music programme to fostering positive youth development’ (2015) 37(1) Research Studies in Music Education

Demorest, Steven M. and Morrison, Steven J., ‘Does Music Make You Smarter?’ (2000) 87(2) Music Educators Journal

Hodges, Donald A. ‘A Virtual Panel of Expert Researchers’ (2000) 87(2) Music Educators Journal

Majno, Maria, ‘From the model of El Sistema in Venezuela to current applications: learning and integration through collective music education’ [2012] (1252) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Musikkindergarten Berlin (2015) http://www.musikkindergarten-berlin.de/

Schlaug, Gottfried, Norton, Andrea, Overy, Katie and Winner, Ellen, ‘Effects of Music Training on the Child’s Brain and Cognitive Development’ [2005] (1060) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Sistema Australia (2012) <http://sistemaaustralia.com.au>

Spelke, Elizabeth ‘Effects of Music Instruction on Developing Cognitive Systems at the Foundations of Mathematics and Science’ [2008] The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition

Uibel, Stefanie, ‘Education through music – the model of the Musikkindergarten Berlin’ [2012] (1252) Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Vaughn, Kathryn and Winner, Ellen, ‘SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts: What We Can and Cannot Conclude about the Association’ (2000) 34(3/4) Journal of Aesthetic Education