How I Raised My Children in Music

Have you ever noticed that families with extreme religions have a high success rate in having their children become adults who will follow their parents' religious practices? This applies to Orthodox Jews, Mormons, the Amish, Evangelical Christians and others. This is because the children are immersed in the culture from birth and kept away from outside influences as much as possible.

In our house, music is the religion. From birth, we exercised complete control of our children's sound environment. They could only watch television under our supervision. We approved of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood because it had excellent music. Shari Lewis Lamb Chop's Play-Along was musically acceptable. We watched Warner Brothers cartoons (Bugs Bunny etc.) They have excellent orchestral music scores that are indispensable to the humor.

Our children listened to a lot of audiotape cassettes. CD's came along a bit later. The general guideline is that the child should hear only recorded sounds produced by human lungs, hands, and feet. In other words, only singing, and acoustic instruments. No electronically amplified sounds were permitted. Any form of rock music was excluded.

There were many musicians making good recordings for children. These included Raffi, Rosenshontz, and Sharon, Lois and Bram. There are many others. Anything with good singing accompanied by acoustic instruments will help your children develop good musical values.

From an early age, our children listened to jazz singers. These included Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, along with a host of females like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, etc. By the time they entered middle school, our children had a vast knowledge of American songs by Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers, etc. and could instantly identify a large number of jazz and pre-rock pop singers by the sounds of their voices.

Videotaped movie musicals were also a resource for our children's music education. The Wizard of Oz is a good one to start with. Singing in the Rain is also excellent. By middle school, our children knew the movies of Fred and Ginger, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. They knew nothing about Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen, or Bob Dylan, or anybody else whose music we don't like.

Classical music was introduced as bedtime listening. Our children liked to fall asleep to a recording of the Handel Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord. Later, they added the Mozart Quintet for Clarinet and Strings to their bedtime listening menu.

Our daughter is now 32 and our son is 29. Their knowledge of music and their preferences are almost identical to mine. And mine is almost the same as those of my father, who was born in 1915. That's the same year that Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday were born.

Some of my friends envy my child-rearing outcomes because they failed to impart good musical values to their children and watched them get sucked into a culture that is worse than worthless. They see now that they were not sufficiently vigilant and pro-active in making musical values central to the whole domestic environment. Of course, it helped that I am a musician. The children saw adults come to the house to rehearse with me. They thought that playing music is what grownups do.

If music is very important to you and central to your life, you have an excellent chance of seeing your children adopt your values. Good luck.

PS:2 quotations from Duke Ellington:

1. “If it sounds good, it IS good."

2. It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

Why I Withdrew from MoveOn

Obama's 2008 campaign was the greatest one in American history. There was a widespread disgust with the Presidency of W, and a horror at the thought of another Republican Administration. Obama seized the opportunity brilliantly, attracting a record setting amount of money from a record number of donors and a huge army of volunteer campaign workers. McCain was a crappy candidate who blew any slim chance he had when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. For millions of moderates who might have voted for McCain, that was a deal-killer. The 2008 election set a new record for voter turnout. Obama received 53% of the popular vote. More people voted for Barack Obama than for any other candidate in the history of the United States. I was born in 1945. Since the minimum age for voting was 21 when I came of age, the 1968 election was the first presidential election that I was old enough to vote in. That was a terrible year in U.S. history. The Vietnam War was raging, inflicting death and destruction on innocent people who posed no risk whatsoever to America. The American death machine was sucking in draftees and sent more than 50,000 Americans home in body bags. The war was pointless and America lost! As a result of this, in 1968, I voted for a third party candidate who was anti-war. I don't remember who it was -- probably some Socialist Party candidate. From 1968 until 2004, I was not politically active. I always voted, but usually for a left-wing minority party candidate. In 2004, I took up an invitation from an old friend to do volunteer work for the Kerry campaign in Pennsylvania during the last week before the election and on election day. That week in Easton, PA was my first introduction to MoveOn.org. I didn't think much of Kerry but I helped him because he had a chance to get W out of office. Then in 2008 I got caught up in that great tide of increased activism that I wrote about at the top of this post. I did a lot of pro-Obama phone banking for MoveOn and door-to-door campaigning in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. I volunteered with MoveOn to do voter turnout work in Easton on election day. After the Obama election, I was recruited by David Greenson to organize a MoveOn Council in the Bronx and to be its leader. Starting in January 2009, I worked long and hard to establish an active council in the Bronx. We started with 6 members and gradually grew to today's total of 73. We pulled off an impressive series of events including numerous meetings with Congressmen and their staffs, health care rallies, educational symposiums, documentary movie screenings, and some interesting and lively council meetings. I don't regret my time working with MoveOn. I met a lot of great Bronx people and enjoyed the time I spent with them. I want to step away from MoveOn now because of my deep disappointment and disillusionment with Obama and because of what I see coming in the 2012 campaign. America's presidential political process is insane and I don't ever want to be ivolved with it again except to change it. It's all about money and image manipulation and not at all about the real issues. What's more, American elections are undemocratic! Why does no one speak out against the electoral college system? How can we accept a system that gives 1 voter in Wyoming the same weight as 8 voters in California? How can we accept a stupid red state - blue state dichotomy that disenfranchises voters in 39 uncontested states and pours all of the campaigns' resources into 11 swing states that decide the outcome for the whole country? We must abolish the electoral college and go to a straight popular vote for President. That is the only way that is democratic. And as for Mr. Obama, he is a decent man, but he won't get my 2012 vote. I don't like his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. I don't like his handling of the economy. He is a champion of capitalism and an enabler of corporate power. He has failed to lead us to progress on climate change or energy independence. In fact, I find Obama to be a drab, boring, over-conciliatory President -- not at all the transformative change agent he had people thinking he was during the campaign. His oratorical flourish vanished the day he got elected. He's no Martin Luther King. I'm not going to go into my own political views here except to summarize by stating that capitalism is the root of all that is wrong and the abolition of capitalism is the starting point for any solution. I set out to write an explanation of my withdrawal from MoveOn. There are two basic reasons: 1. Lack of support for Obama. 2. Lack of support for the undemocratic American Presidential election process. Since I foresee MoveOn's total involvement in the 2012 election in support of Obama, I'm diverting my political volunteering to issue-oriented organizations that won't be involved in elections. I'm sure I'll be staying in touch with all of the friends I met during my time with MoveOn. Thank you for reading this.

The Most Important Issue in 90 Words

We live on a planet with finite resources. A growing world population consuming resources and generating pollution at the rates required to support the American lifestyle is unsustainable and is ultimately suicidal for the planet. We must change our values, goals, and our definition of success. We must live first and foremost to conserve the life-supporting capacity of our planet and not to consume it. Cooperation can lead to survival. Competition only leads to destruction and death. Perpetual economic growth is impossible. We need to shrink the GDP, eliminate personal wealth as the goal of life, and develop a lifestyle that is sustainable.