Musical Children

Subject: Musical Children
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:33 AM

I was at a living history event this weekend where a girl about 8 years old was playing the fiddle and singing. Everybody had a fit about it. "Oh, did you see that little girl?"

Yeah, I saw the little girl. She was about as good a musician as a little girl can be. But she still played and sang like a little girl. There was nothing extraordinary about it at all.

Now - I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not against children. I think it's great when kids are encouraged to explore their talents, musical or otherwise. When I was a kid, I played the piano, and I was a state champion. But there were plenty others like me, and plenty who were much better. (I was only state champion once.) So seeing kids playing instruments is no surprise to me at all.

So my question is - why do people make such a fuss about talented kids? Is it the cuteness factor? Are that many people that surprised when they see a kid who can play an instrument? Just curious.

KFC

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Sorcha
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:34 AM

I think you got it in one, Kim.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:47 AM

Cuteness?

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: katlaughing
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:48 AM

It doesn't seem to be expected of kids as much as when I was growing up, so I think you are right, like Sorcha says, people are surprised at the unusual. That and the media makes a big deal out of anything done by the younger and younger.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Sorcha
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 10:52 AM

I got beat at a fiddle contest once by an 8 yr old kid who couldn't play for beans. It was not the usual contest set up with the judge listening blind.......the judge sat right in front of the contestants and could see them. Every contestant played better than the kid, but he won on cute. Pissed off all the rest of us. Judge was....................Alsdair Fraser.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:05 AM

So what kind of a message does that send to the kids? As long as you're cute you don't have to have any talent?

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Sorcha
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:07 AM

Seems so to me. Then what happens when they are Not Cute anymore and start losing? Great trip, huh?

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:13 AM

On the other hand, I've had the pleasure of knowing a couple of true child prodigies. The cuteness factor ceases to exist when everybody else in a session realizes that a ten-year-old kid can play circles around them. "Ain't he cute?" gets replaced by "Damn he's good!" in a hurry.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:50 AM

Cute, schmute! The important thing is when a kid wants to play and sing, and does. When some youngster shows an interest in performing music (especially if it's something other than what is incessantly barfed out of the radio), I try to do everything I possibly can to encourage them.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 12:10 PM

An eight-year-old playing fiddle? What age did she start? Three or four, maybe.

Setting aside the question of talent vs cuteness, today's kid is the pushed kid. (I'm speaking of middle class America here, and that's a lot of kids.) The parents are so busy with high-pressure jobs, the perfect house, two big cars and the cell phones that their kids need to seem extraordinary to get noticed.

Also, they are supposed to demonstrate from a very early age that they to are smart and gifted enough to fit in this milieu.

I feel sorry for them.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Kim C
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 12:11 PM

Right, and that's good. They should be encouraged. What I'm trying to figure out, though, is why some people think that a child who can sing or play an instrument is an alien that landed from Mars or something.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 01:08 PM

Maybe it's because ...out of the hundreds of kids that are signed up for lessons..only a couple of them actually have the love of music from the inside out. As a parent who tried, lord knows I tried, to keep my kids in lessons, they hated it and quit. Some years later, my daughter picked up the guitar and hasn't put it down yet! She writes, sings and plays like a real pro ... she's 15. Yes...people are amazed at her talents..and I thinks it's because these youngsters have a love and understanding for music that the rest of us can only dream about.. Just my opinion.. but I think it's just plain envey !

LL

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Don Firth
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 01:19 PM

The daughter of a friend of mine saw a performance of "The Nutcracker" (an annual Christmas production of Pacific Northwest Ballet) when she was about four years old. She said she wanted to be a ballet dancer. Long after seeing the ballet, Anna was still spending inordinate amounts of time for a four-year-old bounding around the house trying to imitate what she had seen on stage. Her parents picked up on this and took her to a ballet class for rug-rats, with the idea that if she didn't like it, she didn't have to continue. She loved it! She stuck with it. People used to say "How cute!" when they saw her dance, but that neither puffed her up nor deterred her. She's fourteen now, and is growing tall and slender, like a ballerina. In most respects she's a normal teen-aged girl with all the usual frivolities, but underlying all that, she's more serious than most. She has a purpose and a goal. She has gone to regular ballet classes for several years now, she has performed a lot (not professionally yet), and she's getting good—very good. It wouldn't surprise me to see her on the professional stage in the not-too-far-distant future. Nor would it surprise me to see her dance the role of Clara (or any of a number of good roles) in a future Pacific Northwest Ballet production of "The Nutcracker," where it all started.

Right from the start, her parents were sensitive to her interests, and they gave her a chance to try something she wanted to try. They never pushed her, but when she wanted to continue, they supported her. I think they're very wise.

Music, art, dance, whatever. Expose the young'un to a wide range of stuff, see where they might want to take it, then give them support. My parents did that for my sisters and me, and we're eternally grateful.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Hawker
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 05:25 PM

Right now, my 11 year old is NOT cute, she is a sulky hormonal pre-teenage monster, but hell she has a fantastic singing voice and has been able to sing in tune AND remember all the words to songs that I can't - now that is clever! My 7 year old played twinkle twinkle little star on her violin last summer (when 6) in a local concert, that was fingers down the throat cute! She has just started playing more folkie stuff like Carrion Crow and St Patricks reel, so maybe soon she'll flourish into a musician! She loves listening to other fiddle players at festivals, and I have noticed post festival eagerness to practise, due to the inspiration she gains there!

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 05:54 PM

I started to learn to play the violin when I was four years old. I didn't have pushy parents. I admire them for putting up with me in the 'I am really bad at this' stage. I left school when I was 15 ( 1 year early here in England we leave when we are 16) to go to music college. I did my some of my GCSE's and all my A levels there. I played professionally from the age of 15. At 15 it DEFINATELY is NOT the cuteness factor. I enjoyed playing and still do. Playing the violin came naturally and now I enjoy picking up new instruments that I can't play and figuring them out.

Music in schools is not encouraged enough. Kids see playing an instrument as 'not cool' and give up when they get to high school. It's a shame. Children should be encouraged to pick up an instrument and learn how to play it and make music. They should not be judged on how cute they look holding the instrument.

Cat

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: GUEST,Mary Katherine
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 05:59 PM

Maybe the reason musical kids stand out ("like aliens" as someone putit) is because nowadays so few children are given exposure to enough of it to create an interest. Most kids are left in front of a TV by parents who are too busy to expose them to any better culture on a regular basis; others are given "toys" like video games, cell phones, boom boxes and other electronica at an early age, and as they get older they demand more and more such "toys" and grow farther and farther away from anything more substantial. How many parents today even buy their youngsters musical instruments, compared to the number that buy their kids these expensive, status-conferring "gizmos" that we see everywhere? Of course a musically talented child is looked on as unusual --- heck, *any* child today who learns to play an instrument (or, alas, to *read* before entering school) will be seen as "different" from her/his peers. Give thanks for the gag-inducing "cuteness" of that five year old fiddle player; that child has a chance of growing up with its brains in place and a fair amount of its individuality intact.

Mary Katherine <-----stepping down from soapbox now

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: NicoleC
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 06:22 PM

Mary Katherine,

I don't think anyone here would suggest that kids shouldn't be encouraged to play if they want to! But I think the parents factor is even more important than just encouragement -- I mean, look at the kids who take up singing or playing or some other artistic pursuit and stick with it. Usually they have family members or friends of the family involved in something similar. Art becomes a part of life, not a wierd activity.

When I was 5 I got piano lessons when I wanted violin lessons. (Correction: I wanted to play bluegrass fiddle. I supposed it would have helped if I told my parents what I wanted.) Later I picked up guitar and then bass in college because it was the appropriate cool thing to do. I had to turn 30 before I decided I was going to play what *I* wanted to, because, well, I wanted to. No other reason.

Now, if Mom or Dad had sat down and played or sang with me (piano or fiddle), maybe practicing wouldn't have been the punishment it seemed like at 5.

I'm just glad the kids want to play, although I understand Kim's point. Yeah, it's cute, but they also need to learn that they have to *earn* respect and allocades or they don't mean anything.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: X
Date: 12 Aug 02 - 11:10 PM

In the mid 1970s here in San Diego there were a couple of cute kids picking. One was a fiddle/mandolin player and the other was a banjo player. The banjo player was running around copping licks from me and the fiddle/mandolin player was copping licks from my mandolin player. Some pickers snubed them, we helped them out every time they asked...and we treated them like the musicians they were.(Are) In the end, we were very happy to help out Alison Brown and Stuart Duncan.

Do the kids a favor, help all the young musicians you can. If you never make it to the "Big Time" they may and they might do you a favor...and take a part of you along for the ride.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Lyrical Lady
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 01:05 AM

hmmmm..."15 is DEFINATELY not the CUTENESS FACTOR"...I beg to differ... depends on whose kid you're talkin' about! Mine happens to be very cute.... and talented too! lol (Didn't get it from her mom... mores the pity!)

LL

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: hesperis
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 01:33 AM

Well... I hate to break it to you folks... SOME people AREN'T musicians! *ShockHorror!*

It may look perfectly normal to us when children are playing or singing... but maybe some people think a little differently on that score.

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Shonagh
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 06:15 PM

Im 17 and still get the oh! aint she cute! it annoys me so much. If im at a festival, i want to be treated the same as the adults there and not spoken to differently or like im 12. Of course, not everyone does that, i mean theres only a few ive come across but i kinda like the fact that when i sing, people look quite surprised coz (if this makes sense!) i dont look like the kinda of voice i have! (hmm!)

Im very lucky to have supportive parents. I started playing the fiddle at about 8 and although they didnt push me when i wanted 2 give up they encouraged me to keep trying and not to give up and im so glad they did. i dont no what i would do without my fiddle! Then, when i started singing they were even better! Im learning to drive just now but before that they would drive me around Scotland, going to festivals and concerts and just letting me be a musical sponge and absorbing everything around me. Not pushing me to play but still making sure i was heard!

Around the competition circuit, there are so many little kids playing the fiddle especially and it is all the cuteness factor. I mean, yeah, they are good for there age but thats were it ends. Not so bad now with the fiddle because there are so many wee sprogs playing now but a few years back it was quite dodgy! Saying that, there are some very good wee fiddle players and singers as well, but with singing i think that when tou get to a certain age, only then does your "real" voice come out. When i hear 8 years old singing bothy ballads i think, yeah, good for you, keep at it and i try to encourage them because there aint enough wee singers out there but to me they still sound like wee kids.I should really stop ranting and raving now! Oh! i could go on forever!

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 02 - 08:13 PM

We encouraged Barky to play, went to a lot of grade-, junior- and high-school concerts, praised her when she was good, coached her when she wasn't. But the passion for the music was the driving force and it was not to be brooked. She leaves Friday for a professional Conservatory, living on her own for the first time, really -- but the point is that sure, she was cute, but sahe also worked at getting good. And she has.

For me, the reason why wonder startts to set in when you hear a small child make music is the same magic you get hit between the eys with when a baby is born; it means something good will be out there in the future, and there's some reason to be hopeful and forward-looking. It may also be "cute" but I think the magic of the future is a much more powerful element. It isn't fair that they extra points in a peer contest for it, but it is certainly understandable -- because that's where all the rewards are, down in the future!

A

A

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Firecat
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 04:42 PM

I actually read in the paper a few weeks back that recorders put kids off learning music. My response to this would be... Yeah, right! I learnt recorder when I was about 7. I don't play it now but I enjoyed it then. I also learnt cello from 9 to 14, getting up to Grade 3, keyboard in Year 10 and 11 (14 - 16 years old), and I've played bodhran seriously for the last 6 years.

I've also done loads of singing in public, with Keith Donnelly dragging me up on stage at Crewe and Nantwich Festival 1996, and a short solo in this year's performance by the Youth Music Workshop at Warwick Festival.

Shonagh, you're right about the singing and your "real" voice only coming out when you're older. I didn't get my full range for singing (about 2 1/2 - 3 octaves) until I was about 14 (I'm 18 now) and even now I still worry I might lose it. I heard some of the littlies singing a bit back and even though I thought "Aaah!", I saw the parents forcing them and I started worrying cos if you use your voice loads at a really early age, you run more risking of overworking it and losing it when you're older. What about Charlotte Church!?

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: NicoleC
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 05:06 PM

I hated recorders; I thought they were the stupidest thing we could all be forced to learn. I seemed to be in the majority -- we had more fun with the percussion instruments and xylophones and such when we all got to pick up the ones we liked and play together. Now, of course, I understand they wanted something we could take home and practice, and the recorder doesn't seem as dorky as it used to. But...

Maybe it was just that we were all forced to do the same thing, when music is by nature very individual?

Subject: RE: Musical Children
From: Deckman
Date: 14 Aug 02 - 06:50 PM

What a great thread! Threads such as this revive my MUDCAT spirit.

I have two comments to add to the discussion. My 'bestest' friend ever passed away nine years ago. We grew up together. His parents were musicians. He was a child prodigy, violin. He performed with the Seattle symphoney as a youngster. When we kids were growing up, it was the classic scene: he couldn't play baseball now, he had to come home and practice for three hours (true). He had a magnificiant career: concert violist, symphoney conductor (five orchestras) toured most of Europe. He was a driven man ... and Yes, I loved him dearly and we kept in touch all our lives.

But having said that, I've often wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn't been pushed so hard and so early. Sure, that's how we get our surperb musicians. We condition them, train them early, deny them other venues. And we are rewarded for our efforts, by driven musicians who perform brilliantly.

But, what about the other opportunities they missed. Just food for thought. CHEERS, Bob