Musical Childhoods is a culmination of more than a decade of research driven by the fact that music has been neglected in early childhood programs in favour of literacy and numeracy. Recent research has identified a connection between academic performance and musical programs and this has given music a renewed status in many schools. This book promotes the idea of children’s competence in the use of the language of music and argues that all children have a right to participate in musical discovery and celebrates children’s engagement with meaningful and disparate experiences in music. Written by leading practitioners and researchers in the field, this book seeks to reaffirm children’s communicative competence when exposed to high quality musical experience, provide new perspectives on children’s ability to engage with music in many diverse forms and explore and promote the role of the musician as an artist and teacher. The book is structured into three parts: The theoretical overview The children, the musicians and the music The research through the eyes of the protagonist and looking into the future Early childhood students, researchers and academics with a specific interest in music and musicality will find this an insightful read.

Bringing together scholars from musicology, literature, childhood studies, and theater, this volume examines the ways in which children's musicals tap into adult nostalgia for childhood while appealing to the needs and consumer potential of the child. The contributors take up a wide range of musicals, including works inspired by the books of children's authors such as Roald Dahl, P.L. Travers, and Francis Hodgson Burnett; created by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lionel Bart, and other leading lights of musical theater; or conceived for a cast made up entirely of children. The collection examines musicals that propagate or complicate normative attitudes regarding what childhood is or should be. It also considers the child performer in movie musicals as well as in professional and amateur stage musicals. This far-ranging collection highlights the special place that musical theater occupies in the imaginations and lives of children as well as adults. The collection comes at a time of increased importance of musical theater in the lives of children and young adults.

Essays explore music's roles in the lives of children

Musical Childhoods of Asia and the Pacific agglomerates stories of young children’s music and musicking from around Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A collection of truly unique traditions are interrogated through a variety of contemporary methodologies. Readers are privileged to hear about children’s musical worlds from children, mothers’ musical worlds from mothers, a struggle to engage with music in a closed society, and new gender politics, among other stories. Researchers share experiences and insights gained from applying their chosen methodologies and add to the debate that shapes the continually transforming domain of music education research. Musical Childhoods builds on the diverse inquiry presented in the first three volumes in the series. This volume is an important addition to the libraries of colleges of education and schools of music, as well as music scholars and educators, researchers, and graduate students who are concerned with advancing both the scope and quality of research in the study of music teaching and learning.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the childhood musical experiences of Vietnamese elders, providing a unique lens on the intersections between identity, culture, and music education. Centering the stories of five Vietnamese Americans and one Vietnamese person who grew up in Vietnam between 1931 and 1975, the author considers the role that each individual’s childhood musical experiences played in their life as they were impacted by war, political movements, and immigrant and refugee experiences. The book adds a new perspective to research on the global music practices of children by exploring music transmission and repertoire in Vietnam in the context of political unrest and colonialism before and during the Vietnam War. It also explores the evolution of the personal meanings and memories of music over a period of drastic change in each individual’s life, as five of six elders transitioned into a life in the United States. This book provides both an act of cultural and musical preservation, and relevant implications for music education today. Situating the children’s songs and games of Vietnamese culture in their original context, the author invites those in the field of music education to consider how lived experiences and entrenched systems of teaching affect music learning and identity formation. The volume includes a selection of Vietnamese children’s songs, games, chants, and musicopoetic lullabies (ca dao), offering ways to enrich music educators’ world music curricula. Relevant to music education, ethnomusicology, and Asian American studies, this book provides a nuanced account of Vietnamese children’s music making of the past and presents an analysis of childhood musical experiences in a wider cultural, sociopolitical, and historical context.

This book examines four main areas of music in early childhood: the traditions of music for young children, their capacities for music, the way they make music with others, and constructed and mediated musical childhoods. It studies several themes in detail, including music making in the home and family life, various musical experiences in schools, day cares, and the community at large in several locations around the globe. It looks at technology and diverse musical repertoires, as well as innovative pedagogies, children’s agency, and brain research. Expanding on the knowledge bases on which early childhood music education typically draws, the book brings together contributions from a range of authors from diverse fields such as education, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy, ethnomusicology, and the neurosciences. The end result is a volume that offers a broad and contemporary picture of music in early childhood.

Spinning the Child examines music for children on records, radio and television by assessing how ideals of entertainment, education, ‘the child’ and ‘the family’ have been communicated through folk music, the BBC’s children’s radio broadcasting, the children’s songs of Woody Guthrie, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show and Bagpuss, the contemporary children’s music industry and other case studies. The book provides the first sustained critical overview of recorded music for children, its production and dissemination. The music, lyrics and sonics of hundreds of recorded songs are analysed with reference to their specific social, historical and technological contexts. The chapters expose the attitudes, morals and desires that adults have communicated both to and about the child through the music that has been created and compiled for children. The musical representations of age, race, class and gender reveal how recordings have both reflected and shaped transformations in discourses of childhood. This book is recommended for scholars in the sociology of childhood, the sociology of music, ethnomusicology, music education, popular musicology, children’s media and related fields. Spinning the Child’s emphasis on the analysis of musical, lyrical and sonic texts in specific contexts suggests its value as both a teaching and research resource.

Investigation of the role of music in early life and learning has been somewhat fragmented, with studies being undertaken within a range of fields with little apparent conversation across disciplinary boundaries, and with an emphasis on pre-schoolers' and school-aged childrens' learning and engagement. The Oxford Handbook of Early Childhood Learning and Development in Music brings together leading researchers in infant and early childhood cognition, music education, music therapy, neuroscience, cultural and developmental psychology, and music sociology to interrogate questions of how our capacity for music develops from birth, and its contributions to learning and development. Researchers in cultural psychology and sociology of musical childhoods investigate those factors that shape children's musical learning and development and the places and spaces in which children encounter and engage with music. These issues are complemented with consideration of the policy environment at local, national and global levels in relation to music early learning and development and the ways in which these shape young children's music experiences and opportunities. The volume also explores issues of music provision and developmental contributions for children with Special Education Needs, children living in medical settings and participating in music therapy, and those living in sites of trauma and conflict. Consideration of these environments provides a context to examine music learning and development in family, community and school settings including general and specialized school environments. Authors trace the trajectories of development within and across cultures and settings and in that process identify those factors that facilitate or constrain children's early music learning and development.

Exploring and expanding upon current understandings of early childhood music education, this book provides a much-needed response to the rapid social, cultural and technological developments affecting children’s experience of music today. Critical New Perspectives in Early Childhood Music returns to the core question of how children engage, participate and learn through music, and how we are to best harness musical resources to their benefit. Chapters move beyond conservative or traditional models of practice and draw upon new and emerging insights from the fields of childhood studies, neuroscience, psychology and sociology. In-depth analysis of research and real examples from practice illustrate the strengths and possible shortcomings of each approach and acknowledge the diverse impacts of digitisation, increased child autonomy, intensive parenting practices, and cultural and economic diversity on the child’s experience of music. An invaluable theoretical overview of current thinking in relation to contemporary musical childhoods, this book will support and challenge students and early childhood music educators as they rethink practice for the present day.

A comprehensive guide to music therapy with young children, providing a detailed examination of development from birth to age five, with theoretical perspectives and extensive scales of developmental milestones. Information is compiled in nine different chronological periods, including benchmarks for physical, sensory, motor, cognitive, emotional/social, and language development. The book then synthesizes current research on musical development in young children and provides lists of musical behaviors as well as a presentation of the theories of musical development proposed by Briggs/Bruscia and Edwin Gordon.