My Music: Explorations of Music in Daily Life

CHILDREN

C H I L D R E N This page intentionally left blank H E A T H E R K I dance to 'Dude Looks Like a Lady.'>} Heather is four years old and was interviewed by her mother. Q: What's your name? A: Heather. Q: How old are you? A: (holding up four fingers) Four. Q: Do you like to sing? A: Um hum. The Elephant Show. Care Bears song. Q: Do you like to dancer A: I dance to "Dude Looks Like a Lady." [by Aerosmith] Q: What kind of singers do you like? A: I like some people who play horns and guitars. I like to sec the Elephant Show singers. I like the guy in Labyrinth [David Bowie] who sings. Tina Turner and Bon Jovi. Q: Why do you listen to the radio? A: Because it's my favorite music. Um, and the records too. I like it when they dress up. Q: Do you want to be a singer when you grow up? A: Yes,'cause I look beautiful when I dress up. Q: What's your favorite thing to play musicwith? A: Piano. I love pianos because they have white keys on them to play music, and black things too, and little doors to open and close. I like the guitar, because I like it. I like the drums 'cause they have sticks and they make lots of noise when vou hit on them. Children I 7 J O H N N I E "You have to have a lullaby before you sleep. I told you . . . that's what lullabiesmeans." Johnnie is five years old. He was inten icwed by his aunt. Q: Johnnie, I want you to help me play a game. Okay? A: Sure. What kind of game are we going to play? Q: It is a game of pretending. I want you to pretend that you have never seen me before . . . A: (interrupting) You mean, make believe that you aren't my aunt, but some bad person I'm not supposed to talk to? Q: (laughing) I want you to pretend that you don't know me but don't pretend that I am a bad person. I just want you to make believe that you have never met me before and tell me who you are, where you live, what you like to do. Stuff like that, okay? Stuff that I already know but I want you to pretend that I don't know it. Do you understand? A: Sure I do. We do this in school. Well. . . did you know that it's called roleplaying? Q: (laughing) Yes,that's what I want to do. Roleplay. So why don't you start telling me about you. A: Well, you see, my name is Johnnie Rcluto. I live at 32. Hill Road, in Scranton. That's very far away from here, unless youfly.Then it's not so very bad. (pause) Q: Good. Keep going. A: Well, I am in kindergarten. I go to St. Luke's School. My teacher is named Linda. Q: Can you tell me what kinds of things you do in school? Do you ever sing? A: Oh, sure. I think . . . I think that we sing every day. Q: What kind of things do you sing? M Y M u s i c / 8 A: Well,we sing allsorts of stuff. Wesing songs about animalsand ... we sing songs about Christmas . .. and we sing songs about Chanukah. 'Cause, you know, not everyone has a Christmas. Just the people that go to church. Some people go to a place that's like a church . . . 'cause Jesus lives there . . . only it's called a temple. (Johnnie shouts this last word.) Q: Well, what kind of songs do you like to sing best? A: The loud ones. Q: The loud ones. How come? A: Because then we are allowed to run around . . . and we can jump up and down if we want to ... just not near the record player,because then the record skips . . . it skips . . . and it says the same thing that it just said. Only over and over again. Timmy and I think it's funny, but Linda says it's not supposed to do that. Q: So, if the music is loud, then you can run around? A: Yes. We can run as fast as we want and we can jump up and...