Tom’s Big Picture

It seems that I can’t go a day without a reminder of how proactive I must be as a parent, lest my kids accept the destructive pop culture defaults. Case in point: my wife and I live in a country subdivision, partially to have space for the kids to play (and to garden, enjoy the outdoors, etc), partially for safety, and partially for the sanity of mental separation from both the urban (non-negotiable and unacceptable) and suburban (acceptable but artificial) modes of life. Yet even out in the woods the culture comes to us.

For the first 18 months we were in our house, at least once a day (more often at night), we were treated to the experience of our windows shaking to a hip-hop beat emanating from a twentysomething young man’s Ford Ranger- you know the type who lives with their parents after high school with $3000 worth of speakers and amps in a $2000 truck. He has normal enough parents, successful upper middle class ones at that, yet he identifies culturally with 80-IQ felons and their tribal misogynistic grunts and obscenities marketed to our youth as “music”. How did this happen? How does someone who is heir to the greatest musical traditions in the world degrade his tastes to this level?

The answer is that it happened by default. Unless parents take proactive steps to displace the cultural defaults, the child will simply accept the music of his peers.

Hip-hop and rap is particularly dangerous. Here’s why, and I’ll try saying this as delicately as possible: the IQ of the target adult audience of rap and hip-hop is equivalent to your child’s at age 12, possibly younger depending on how much above average your child is. Thus, a lot of the problem with kids like my neighbor’s is early exposure to a form of “music” that is optimized for their young minds- and since it combines simplistic rhythms with a high level of aggression, it can be quite addictive for a young man experiencing the testosterone surge of early adolescence. Hip-hop and rap are naturally attractive to our children at young ages, and thus we must intervene and prevent their exposure to much of it before it’s too late.

But more than preventing listening to bad “music”, we must cultivate a taste in good music, which is pretty hard and requires some digging.

Much “Contemporary Christian” music is not much help in this regard. While fun to listen to and without the destructive messages, it does little to cultivate better taste in music. Yet many Christian parents, presumably some who homeschool, who would be horrified if their high school child were unable to read beyond a 3rd grade level, accept musical illiteracy as a matter of little concern. While some CC music is artfully done (much of my wife’s Caedmon’s Call and other similar bands is more complex lyrically than any secular music), the danger is the availability of the same illiterate grunting with a Christian label. Grunting for Jesus is still illiterate grunting, regardless of the Christian veneer, and we should expect more from our children. We also must remember that CCM is now a manufactured product owned and marketed by secular companies. We should not let our guard down because it is in a Lifeway store. And it would be an especially bad mistake to insist that this music be the only music a Christian family should listen to.

My call here is not for an elimination of CCM or non-destructive pop music (increasingly rare as the culture continues its decline, but a lot of music from the 50’s and 60’s would qualify), but for deliberateness and moderation. Reading, watching videos, music listening and any other form of media consumption are analogous to a diet, and what we read, watch, and listen to affects us. Not only that, we need to realize that, for our children, there is a finite amount of time available for reading, listening and watching. If we choose to consume one thing, we are choosing NOT to consume another. This is another example of opportunity cost.

Yet it can be daunting to begin to expose your children to better music, chiefly the broad category labeled “classical music”. There’s so much of it, it’s not well-marketed, and the jargon is confusing. In addition, many of the orchestral compositions from the 1900’s are ugly, dissonant pieces, the musical equivalent of modern art, interesting for musical theorists but painful for normal human beings to listen to.

As a person who only really started listening to classical as an adult (as recently as 2001 my musical diet consisted of mostly U2, Metallica, Creed, and the like), I thought I would share advice as to how to get started. First, it’s ok to listen to only the classical you really like. There’s nothing shameful about listening to “popular” classical pieces instead of obsessing over obscure mediocre pieces- like any hobby, the connoisseur of a given hobby is typically more interested in impressing others with trivia and knowledge of the hobby than enjoying the hobby for its own sake.

So first, I’d suggest you go to the classical section at a large store and buy a multi-disc album with a label like “100 Greatest Classical Pieces of All Time.” That will be a pretty good sample of what’s generally been well liked by a lot of people over time. Once you find a piece or composer you like, you can dig deeper into the composer’s work to find more music you enjoy.

As a general guide, I would start with piano sonatas- these are pieces that involve only the piano typically, and avoid the sensory overload of orchestral music. Beethoven is still the best IMO, and is the composer I keep returning to as the greatest, even though Wagner is my favorite (unfortunately, I don’t get to listen to Wagner much, as it is too emotionally intense for background music while I work- Wagner’s music must be listened to loud with one’s full attention- maybe I should get a massive amp and speaker system for my car and drive past ghettoboy’s house at 5 in the morning with Ride of the Valkyries turned up till my ears bleed). Chopin’s solo piano music is also excellent, esp. if you enjoy melancholy themes- you might want to avoid Chopin’s etudes, as these are pieces intended to build piano technique, not primarily for listening pleasure.

From piano pieces it is very easy to expand to violin sonatas, esp. Bach’s solo violin works. A little bit of searching on Amazon can yield a lot of leads in this area. Both violin and solo piano music make excellent background music for study and dining.

Next, you can add string quartets by various composers, as well as piano concertos, which are typically pianos backed by an orchestra. Finally, consider Beethoven’s symphonies and some Mozart and Bach masses- if you’re learning Latin at home (still undecided on this one), this can be a great exercise to look at the words of the mass, typically printed on the album insert. Beethoven’s Mass in C Minor and Mozart’s Requiem are both great starts for choral music.

If you’re deciding between pieces, I find that something in a minor key is usually much more emotionally complex and nuanced. This is an interesting phenomenon, as minor keys are “sad” in tone, yet listening to them makes us happy, even transcendent (Beethoven’s 9th being the greatest example). Most Christmas carols are in minor keys- esp. the ones that move us most powerfully, like Silent Night and Little Town of Bethlehem. There’s something about the starkness of the minor key that is comforting, esp. in these songs we sing every year.

In addition to exposing children to this great music, it’s important to cultivate a real, emotional connection to it- not as a museum piece, but real, living music that expresses the highest ideals of our civilization. Here are a few things I’m doing. First, when we listen to classical, I describe it to my girls as “pretty music.” Now the oldest one will often volunteer this (as a near three-year-old, she gives a play-by-play commentary on everything) when I turn it on. I do a couple of other things, at the risk of sounding silly, but it’s worth mentioning.

I will take great classical themes, while they’re playing, and work the girls’ names in, singing the tune. So, for example, the famous first four note theme of Beethoven’s 5th is sung to the lyrics of my youngest girl’s name, repeated over and over again as the tune progresses. Fur Elise, perhaps the most recognizable Beethoven piano piece, has its theme sung as the three-syllable name of my oldest daughter. Children are really attached to their names, and music at the toddler stage being rather abstract, this is a way to help them emotionally connect to the music. Now the oldest, when she hears Beethoven’s 5th, says “that’s baby’s song”- or will even sing it to her sister in a sotto voce, doing the best her little voice box can at imitating my baritone.

I also will make use of Chopin and Straussian waltzes (Richard Strauss was an exception among 20th century composers, in following the traditions of his German forebears in producing real classical music, as opposed to the “modern” variety- Strauss is the composer of the 2001 Space Odyssey theme, Also sprach Zarathustra), and do my awful best to “dance” with the girls, which they really seem to enjoy. The youngest, who is too young to fear anything, especially likes being dipped. The oldest will jump around herself “dancing” if the Nutcracker theme is played. Waltzes in general are wonderful light classical pieces, with a nice rhythym and pleasant melodies.

Anytime you can help small children do something active instead of passively listening, you stimulate more neurons in their sponge-like brains and make more of a permanent impact.

I also believe children should be exposed to the folk music of their culture. Country music and particularly Bluegrass are the folk music of our country (as Country/Bluegrass is the only genre that appeals to a wide age range, as opposed to pop/rock and its dependence upon rebellious youth for its marketing appeal)- not all of it is worth listening to, but if you pick and choose (hint: iTunes is esp. nice for country music, with its 30 minute albums with one good song) you can get the very best with no compromising moral messages. George Strait, Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, etc, all have good songs and bad songs, so pick the good ones (moral and appealing). As for Bluegrass, and I know I’m simplifying, but all you need to know is to order every album put out by Alison Krauss- much of it is moral and uplifting, some of it explicitly Christian.

Ok, after reading this, my editorette said that I have probably overwhelmed my audience here with suggestions (music is one of my hobbies). Let me give you a really easy way to take action on this, with two words: satellite radio, or any commercial-free radio source. Thank goodness we no longer have to listen to liberal public radio, begging for money every 20 minutes, to get good classical music. XM or Sirius both have two dedicated classical and one bluegrass station. For the most part, you can turn this on and forget about it, as neither genre will have anything very destructive that could come on by accident. Of the two (I have both), XM plays a better mix of real classical, while Sirius plays more 20th century modern junk. However, the bluegrass station on XM seems to have a lot of compression (like listening to a bad MP3), whereas the Sirius bluegrass station sounds more like a CD. So each has their ups and downs, but since I listen to much more classical than bluegrass, I would consider XM to be the superior choice. The nice thing about this option is that you don’t need to know or buy anything- just start listening. If you pay for digital cable or Dish or DirecTV, you already have CD-quality music stations which include these genres. Make use of them.

I’m not saying certain types of music must be the exclusive things we listen to, but that we should at least choose the proportions. My goal is that at least 1/2 of the music I enjoy, and 75% of what my children enjoy, be either classical or legitimate folk music. Much like the mind must be stretched before one can read full-strength literature, so must the mind be stretched to appreciate good music. Those who advocate the moral and technical equality of all forms of music are as ridiculous as someone arguing that People Magazine is equivalent to Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. Music is not some abstract cloud of personal preference, but rather has a discrete language than can be studied note by note, chord by chord (or in the case of hip-hop, grunt by grunt)- and it is anything but equal. To say so reflects a lack of knowledge or a leveling, Marxist mindset- and we should be trying to teach our children to be better, not equal.