The children, between the ages of five and seven, observed the grace with which the members of the jazz quartet played their instruments perched on the railing of the lake in Madrid's Casa de Campo.
Trumpet, saxophone, electric guitar and double bass played
Caravan
, a composition written by Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington that, in 1937, reached number four on the charts in the United States.
This melody was followed by many others to the rhythm of blues, ragtime, dixieland or swing.
One morning in which this improvised children's audience, gathered in front of the band, enjoyed jazz.
A musical genre that, as Nina Simone said: “is not just music;
it is a way of life, a way of being, a way of thinking ”.
The history of jazz is also part of the efforts in favor of human dignity, democracy and civil rights.
A circumstance that motivated the Unesco General Conference to proclaim International Jazz Day today.
More information
Why it is important for children to keep music in their lives
Music, our first interaction with the world
Currently, there are many music teachers who advise the incorporation of the learning of this musical genre from a very early age because, as Alberto Sánchez Delance, music teacher and coordinator of the School of Music of the CEU San Pablo Montepríncipe School, comments, “ age should never be an obstacle for children to come and listen to jazz there is no age, curiosity teaches, it is free, and more in children ”. In addition, this Music teacher continues, “jazz is not difficult to understand at these ages, you just have to give yourself the opportunity to listen to it in order to educate the ear, so that it reaches the brain and, at the same time, it begins to manage the feelings and emotions ”.
Among the benefits that jazz offers during childhood, according to Alberto Sánchez Delance, is “fostering creativity, increasing concentration. In addition, it favors psychomotor skills through dance, social skills, stimulates memory and causes full emotional and intellectual development ”. An opinion that coincides with that of Esther Fernandino, Organización Txikijazz Donostia, who affirms that, in addition to all of the above, "given its capacity for improvisation and its unrepeatable, spontaneous and free character, it encourages the enjoyment of the here and now". Likewise, Esther Fernandino explains that young people belong to jazz groups or Big Band, “like other group work, they teach the importance of teamwork, the importance of listening and learning from the other and, they teach you to socialize,to belong to a group and, in this way, achieve a common goal ”.
Alicia Labrada, violinist and director of the Musical Pedagogical Center Stimuli in Music for Children, teaches music classes from the age of three using the Suzuki method, developed by Shinichi Suzuki. This violinist stated that children learn to speak their own language with great accuracy thanks to their great hearing ability, which led him to think that, if children were surrounded by musical sounds, they could evolve towards a similar ability with music. In other words, as Alicia Labrada explains, it is about children learning "through imitation, repetition and listening with the accompaniment of their parents." In addition, this music teacher continues, "the more plastic the brain is, the more it absorbs."Knowledge of any instrument requires a structured methodology that offers them a basis to approach it, but also, Alicia Labrada continues, “children need to fiddle with the instrument. And how it gets around: through jazz, letting a child try to play or reproduce what he is listening to through a musical base, that is, start improvising ”. The action of improvising in music, according to Montserrat Sanuy (1994, p. 151), “favors disinhibition, stimulates curiosity and search in the process of research and development of creativity, develops the capacity for expression through observation, memory , representation and imagination, greater confidence and self-assurance is achieved and favors social intercommunication ”.“Children need to fiddle with the instrument. And how it gets around: through jazz, letting a child try to play or reproduce what he is listening to through a musical base, that is, start improvising ”. The action of improvising in music, according to Montserrat Sanuy (1994, p. 151), “favors disinhibition, stimulates curiosity and search in the process of research and development of creativity, develops the capacity for expression through observation, memory , representation and imagination, greater confidence and self-assurance is achieved and favors social intercommunication ”.“Children need to fiddle with the instrument. And how it gets around: through jazz, letting a child try to play or reproduce what he is listening to through a musical base, that is, start improvising ”. The action of improvising in music, according to Montserrat Sanuy (1994, p. 151), “favors disinhibition, stimulates curiosity and search in the process of research and development of creativity, develops the capacity for expression through observation, memory , representation and imagination, greater confidence and self-assurance is achieved and favors social intercommunication ”.The action of improvising in music, according to Montserrat Sanuy (1994, p. 151), “favors disinhibition, stimulates curiosity and search in the process of research and development of creativity, develops the capacity for expression through observation, memory , representation and imagination, greater confidence and self-assurance is achieved and favors social intercommunication ”.The action of improvising in music, according to Montserrat Sanuy (1994, p. 151), “favors disinhibition, stimulates curiosity and search in the process of research and development of creativity, develops the capacity for expression through observation, memory , representation and imagination, greater confidence and self-assurance is achieved and favors social intercommunication ”.
Alicia Labrada maintains that “jazz gives children the courage to discover for themselves certain sounds and to enjoy a certain freedom. A child begins first at a traditional level and later when he knows more or less the rudiments of an instrument, the teacher can put music on it and the child try to play on it. But the child is not going to understand the structure of jazz, what jazz gives is a feeling of structured freedom as well ”. The instruments played by the children who attend their classes, ages 3 to 8, are the violin, viola, cello and piano. He assures that a lot of jazz is made with wind instruments, “but there are no elaborate systems to start before the age of eight because children do not have adequate thoracic capacity. Although it is being tried that, at very basic levels,with violin and piano they can begin to unleash their imagination without a harmonic base, because jazz, although it seems that it is pure improvisation, is not, because underneath there is a series of very solid knowledge ”.
For his part, Oriol Saña, professor of jazz and modern violin and professor of Jazz and Combo Violin in the Department of Jazz and Modern Music of the ESMUC since 2002, begins to work with his students, aged 6 or 7, with the music of tradition, easy to identify and that can be remembered by ear, and also with pop music. “Later, when they have already assimilated this, that's when I start working, from the age of 8, with the Jazz Manouche at the Municipal School of Music -Centre de les Arts de L'Hospitalet de Llobregat-. This Jazz is the only indigenous one in Europe. A style also called Gypsy Swing, with three instruments (guitar, double bass and violin), with the particularity that improvisation is present from the ground up ”, explains this violin teacher.
Oriol Saña regrets that improvisation or creativity is not within the plan in regular teaching: “this is the great problem of conservatories, it is not formed to be able to create something instantly with the instrument. Everything must be read. In the conservatory, in the first year, at the age of 8, they begin, in theory, with classical music, although, in reality, most of the time they practice with popular. We, on the other hand, started from the beginning with little jazz, swing melodies. And then, when they have acquired a certain technical ability, since a blues can have the same difficulty as a traditional composition, it is when we also introduce classical music in learning, because we understand that with an instrument that is 500 years old, such as the violin They should also drink from those sources ”.
Oriol Saña considers that a true musician should not limit himself to interpreting, he should be able to improvise: "we forget that the three great musicians of the time, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers". Likewise, this Jazz and Combo Violin teacher continues, “many traditional teachers postpone improvisation for more advanced stages of musical learning, because they consider it to be very difficult. Actually, improvisation is difficult for that teacher, but not for the student. When you ask a child to draw a princess, what he does is draw that princess, but also a dragon, a castle, a horse ... he sees everything related. Something similar happens when we ask a student to improvise with the A Major scale, which can be learned in the first year. The child, automatically, relates La to Si,If with C sharp, with Re, with E, and order those notes creating your own melodies. This improvisation works from the first moment, when we only work with one rhythm and only two notes ”. Therefore, aware of the importance of the improvisation element in the learning of students, he says that it is essential "to give them the tools so that, based on some parameters and indications, they can create something for themselves".can create something for themselves ”.can create something for themselves ”.
We all have a musical DNA, a creative DNA.
“If a person is capable of ordering the sounds that his instrument produces in a coherent way so that we can understand it, that is, he is capable of improvising, I am sure that he will also be able to do it with other artistic or intellectual manifestations.
Children, as with the Suzuki methodology, first have to listen, decipher the sounds and reproduce them on an instrument.
And then is when they must learn to read and write scores.
Children begin to speak earlier than to write.
And with music we should do the same ”, concludes the jazz and modern violin teacher.
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