Aileen Smyth's music class, Ridgeway (?) School. None identified. (194?)
Courtesy of MONOVA archives no. 10225
Although we largely write about built heritage at NSH, this week’s post is a bit of an exception. The idea for this post was sparked by the photo above by our resident writer and NSH president, Jennifer Clay. Seeing this photo and knowing that I’m a musician and was a music teacher until the pandemic made her think about how important music education and experiences are in one’s childhood. It also made me think about our cultural heritage of music on the North Shore and I jumped at the chance to write about such an important topic as it is very dear to my heart.
When I began looking into musical photos in both the North Vancouver and West Vancouver archives, the search ‘music’ brought a huge number of hits, giving me an extensive cross-section of musical activity for over a century that would easily fill many blog posts. Between school choirs, community choirs, bands, glee clubs, group music lessons, parades, celebrations, music festivals, and more, the North Shore’s music learning and performing history is rich and diverse. I believe that to keep music flourishing on the North Shore as it always has, kids need the earliest opportunities to explore and development an interest in music. Adults are far more likely to pursue a connection with a musical activity if they’ve had opportunities to connect with music as children, and I feel strongly that all children should be given these opportunities without barriers. Why do I feel the need to get on my soapbox? I do editorialise a fair bit in my blog posts, but this one feels especially strong in this regard.
I’d like to share some of my own musical background to put my view into perspective; My dad was a voice teacher and singer in the Vancouver Opera and later the North Shore Light Opera when I was a child. My mom was a German immigrant and a folk singer of mainly German music. Before I was even born, I would kick up a storm in-utero, apparently, when taken to live music concerts, the first big kicks being at an opera. My early days in diapers (once I was able to crawl over to the iron gate that divided my dad’s home studio from the rest of the home and pull myself to standing) were spent standing at the this gate listening to my dad teach his students. I must have absorbed a lot during this time as I started writing song lyrics at age 3 and full songs by the time I was 4. This shows how even passive exposure to music at a young age can spur on creative development in a young brain.
I began piano lessons shortly after, and voice lessons with my dad a few years later. I studied music intently all the way through to university where I graduated with a four year major in music. During these years of study I was also actively writing and performing music of all kinds. I was painfully shy and music helped me express myself in a way that nothing else could. Shortly after graduation, I began a music career as a singer/songwriter but put this mainly on hold while I had a family. During my kids’ early childhood I began teaching privately in my home, with an average of 21 students per week, seeing first hand the often profound effect music lessons had on kids of all abilities and ways of learning.
I also had discovered during this time that elementary schools in North Vancouver were not required to teach music; only high schools were. (There are programs available in elementary outside of the regular school programming such as band and strings, but this is not barrier free as it can be costly). If there is a music teacher available for hire, they may be brought in for some classes, but weekly, structured music class and choir, as I had experienced in my school in Coquitlam growing up, were not a required part of the school curriculum. This isn’t to say that individual teachers aren’t using songs or rhythm or other musical elements in their teaching, which is still very positive and important, but it’s not nearly as extensive as a regular, structured music class taught by a music teacher. There had been a music teacher at my kids’ school for a while, and she was amazing, but when she left the school, the void wasn’t filled.
There was a large room with cupboards full of instruments and no one teaching with them. This really bothered me, so I stepped in and volunteered as an after school music teacher, putting on musical revues and even writing a full length musical with the kids and putting it on for the school with wireless mics, lighting and full set design that the community had come together to create. Some of the kids in ‘Glee Club’, as we called it, had no experience with or access to formal music lessons and this was their main avenue to learning music. I could see what a positive effect it had in many ways, not least of all, with boosting and developing their self-confidence, which is an often fragile thing for a school-aged child.
I was so happy to have the opportunity to provide some music education at the school, since I had grown up with music class twice a week at school, learning recorder, ukulele, guitar, choral singing and music theory. Even without my private lessons, which were a privilege not every child is privy to, I would have still had quite a strong music education just from my school classes.
Over the years, elementary music classes have been dismissed more and more as an ‘extra’ when it came to curriculum planning and funding, and not as important as ‘academic’ subjects, and are often the first to be cut, despite strong evidence showing that learning music actually helps in an interdisciplinary way, making the learning of math, science and reading easier. There are so many connections made in different parts of the brain all at the same time, that on a scan, nearly the whole brain lights up with activity while participating in music. This all-over brain activity allows children to benefit from music in many, many ways, with just a few listed below that I pulled from the website for the School of Rock:
Early language development
Improved mood and emotional regulation
Physical endurance
Patience and discipline
Gross and fine motor skills
Ability to recognize small differences between sounds (auditory discrimination)
Cooperation and cross-cultural awareness
Improved memory and concentration
Self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-expression
I’m not sure the age of the students in the archival music class photo at the top, but they look to be in grade six or seven. I love the liveliness of this picture. You can feel the energy of the room as their brains light up playing music together!
Creating music as a species, especially in a group, goes back to the days of early humans. As a means of expression, social and community building and communication, music has been an integral and important part of the development of humankind. Because listening keenly for danger during the evolution of our species has wired our brains for complex auditory processing, we are innately tuned to respond to music. This hasn’t changed in millennia, and in fact, seems to have only grown stronger as the ability to copy and share music in written, and relatively recently, recorded form, has further enhanced the human’s ability to listen to, enjoy, create and share music.
Item is a photograph of a group of children in a music class in the gymnasium of the West Vancouver Recreation Centre.
Courtesy of West Vancouver Archives (197?), CA BWVA C001-IT2399. Copyright ownership unknown.
Having some improvised and free learning like choosing from a box of percussion instruments and playing in a group can be an incredibly fun and gratifying activity for young children. It spurs group interaction and creativity without a lot of boundaries and doesn’t require any previous musical training.
Inglewood Jr. High School “Off Keys”, 1959. Courtesy of West Vancouver Archives (1959), CA BWVA C045-10-S01-F20-IT050. Copyright ownership unknown.
I love the name of this vocal group! Singing as a group is wonderful for health and wellness. It lowers cortisol, fosters feelings of group inclusion, strengthens the immune system and releases endorphins, just to name a few positive results. Choral tradition is very strong on the North Shore, with many wonderful choirs currently running throughout our communities.
Not only does early musical training affect a child’s brain, but this early experience actually can affect hearing for people in their senior years. Neurological studies have shown that musical training, especially in the early years, can enhance central auditory processing which can then compensate for peripheral hearing loss. This is especially noticeable for people trying to make out talking, for example, in a room full of other noise. Even learning music later in life has still shown a positive effect on hearing, despite some hearing loss.
Continuing to engage in music throughout a lifetime also has other important benefits such as social engagement. Musical memory seems to have a hard shell, so to speak, in the brain. Even when many other memories seem to have been lost, musical memories seem to remain strong and hearing familiar music can engage people that otherwise struggle to engage due to diseases such as Altzheimer’s or dementia. This allows people who may be experiencing difficulties communicating or socialising due to age-related disease to join in with listening to, or making, music.
Item is a photograph of the Seniors Band, led by former Reeve Stanley Collier, playing for an audience at the opening of the West Vancouver Seniors Activity Centre.
Courtesy of West Vancouver Archives, 0580.0006.DWV
I am currently living a life full of music as I’ve just released my first album and am heavily involved in the local Vancouver music community. I’ve been seeing first hand the positive effects music has had on people in my community who were really struggling and found their way through music. Someone even told me last week that music literally saved their lives in their darkest hour. This, along with all the other positive musical effects I’ve written about, makes me want to do everything I can to keep music a vibrant part of our communities on the North Shore and beyond. I’ve been doing what I can by getting people involved somehow in music and facilitating musical connections.
Another big part of the equation is going to support live music whenever possible. Each week I make an effort to support musicians by going to a couple shows if at all possible. Supporting musicians this way by showing up is not taken for granted by those playing live music.
And if you are a parent, guardian or grandparent of a child and don’t see much music in your local school, reach out to the school to let them know your interest and see if more music can be brought in. If they can’t hire a music teacher, some schools, especially community schools, do inexpensive after-school programming and may be able to bring in a music teacher. Sometimes it’s just knowing there’s a strong interest that can bring more music into a school. I think it should be a given, but until music is part of the curriculum in all elementary schools, speaking up and expressing interest can make a difference.
Did you have music education in your elementary school or outside of school? Did you grow up on the North Shore and participate in music activities? Did you connect with this blog post in any other way? Please feel free to post your answers in the Comments section of this article!
PS, if you are curious to check out my music I go by Atlin Morgan in my music life. I’ve just released an album called Lady Grey. And my website link is here : https://atlinmorgan.com