Enlarge Your Sound Repertory
Irmgard Lehrer Carlé, Isaiah Martin · Music Educators Journal · 1975
Children are natural explorers. Their curiosity is all-consuming. Give them a musical instrument and they will either take it apart or play it. Let them participate in a simple jam session, and their absorption will last for a considerable length of time. Passive members of the group will unexpectedly come to life and begin to participate, and chronic disrupters will cooperate rather than risk the stern rebuke of their peers. In order to have a successful jam session, all you need is a simple percussion group that can consist of almost any combination of instruments. The jam session becomes even more exciting when the instruments have been made by the group members themselves. The members of such a group may be of any age-from seven-year-olds to teenagers and young adults. They may be students in a school, patients in a hospital, or participants in a special education class. We assume that, for the most part, they have had only minimal or no music training. We also assume that they like music, as most people do, but are afraid of making fools of themselves in a formal lesson situation. We must also consider that not every child or teenager can afford or wants to take music lessons or buy a musical instrument, nor can every school afford to supply every classroom with equipment for every student. Nevertheless, as music educators we wish to awaken an interest in music in as many people as we can reach and motivate them to explore sounds, pitch relationships, timbres, rhythms, and so on. The desire to explore music in its various forms can provide a great stimulus for using the familar musical instruments. I am think-