MUSIC AND LEARNING, TOGETHER

(Written for Nicole Dalton of CLSU)

       Music is the language of the soul. It can run thoroughly deep within the fibers of our consciousness. The melody it produces, whatever rendering appeals us the most, influences even the barest and tiniest molecule of our personality in many ways we can imagine. And that practically includes connections with our cognitive development being human, all capable of integrated learning that signifies developments in the different genres of life.

      Music speaks using the words our heart equally speaks. The lyrics in its poetic or chaotic presentation symbolize human struggle to its ever dangerous form. The lines telling us each and every understanding of how our own world goes spinning round to the daily grind of our humanity. How many times we laughed, celebrated, floated in the air, got excited or saddened, cried and angered while reflecting a song, listening not only to its outer guise but to the secondary message imbedded within? I, myself, couldn’t count it. It was surely more ways than one.
 
      Theoretically, claimants say that the influence of music begins even before we were born. A child inside the confines of the mother’s womb consequently hears and reacts to the music she hears and eventually develops connection to the outside world all preparing her of the life he will have a few months down the line. Her brain, reacting unconsciously to the sound, develops faster. This particular phenomenon was popularly called, “The Mozart Effect”, named after the great composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who in his genius of the melodious sound composed many of history’s most celebrated musical classics of all time. By the way, Mozart purportedly composed the Twinkle, twinkle little star song when he was just four years old.

      Schools do not exempt us to musical influences. How we, during the early education, learned the alphabets, the numbers and even the common vegetables we eat through one of the many songs being taught to us by our parents and teachers. I can still remember clearly the singing of the rhymes made into songs to the delight of my relatives when I was just a little child. How they say, “Bravo!” whenever I play as the darling of the crowd with the latest completed nursery rhyme performed in front of them is still a nostalgic memory for me.

      Growing up, music becomes a part of ourselves. From the playlist we build inside our Ipods to the song list downloaded into our mobile phones, we make it just like an extension of our own personality that adds color to our lives. Not once we tuned in to our ever dependable FM transistors, from the analog radio to the digital feature of our phones, just to find ourselves tapping our fingers over the table or stomping our foot on the floor to the latest music being played all the while writing our thesis and finishing our term papers.

    All this musical connections are like an upbeat dance stepping on and off to the beats of the drum, the toots of the trumpet, the strums of the guitar, and the chromatic of the piano in a grandiose musical orchestra. The freedom of expression from the message conveyed is like a mirror reflecting the reality of my own. The melody that makes me fly into the skies of my imagination brings a soothing rest to my sometimes tired soul. The beat that makes me move with razor-like precision and pinpoint accuracy to the ever challenging days but can also makes me chill and feel relaxed during times of refreshing. The letters of the lyrics falling exactly into every crevice of my heart telling me that I am human. And into my humanity I sing. I sing into a composition, a perfect musical composition, I created out of my very own life.