Discuss with the board the traditional and cultural music in your home community.

[Meredith Pizzi]

[Rachel Lighty]

In the community I live in, traditional music for these age groups include songs such as “Wheels on the Bus”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, “Old MacDonald”, and other similar songs that I am sure are traditional songs in many areas. I am originally from Iowa so the songs are traditionally folk songs or songs like I listed above. Since I live in Utah now, a different culture is very prevalent and is predominately the LDS community. Some traditional songs for this community that I use quite often are “Popcorn Popping” and “I Am a Child of God”.

[Tracy Schoenberg]

In the community I live in, we have a ton of traditional folk songs that I see in Daycares and preschools in the area. The Park District has Kindermusik, Kid Rock, and Music Together music programs for little kids as well as a ton of music schools to learn instruments. There are also a lot of churches and church programs that teach kids songs from their religious organizations.

[Gwendolyn Van Baalen]

I live and work in a diverse community (Cambridge/Somerville) that is also steeped in rich opportunities to share and experience the music of many cultures through attendance of events, concerts, and exhibits. The families I work with reflect this diversity, and I’ve often thought that it would be clinically useful to encourage the use of music that is traditional to a family’s cultural heritage in our work. This can be quite challenging to accomplish without putting a caregiver on the spot or making assumptions about music that is culturally relevant to them. Has anyone discovered helpful ways to structure an intervention of this kind to make space for sharing of multicultural music?

[Alice Sorensen]

I live and work in a very diverse community as well, the families at my church and who I believe will be in the sprouting melodies programs are mostly from the West Indies and Africa, as well as Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, other Hispanic communities. There is also a lot of traditional American folk music in our area, so it’s pretty well spread out. I have some ideas on changing words to some of the West Indies traditional folk melodies to make them suitable for the goals of Sprouting Melodies – some of these tunes are so catchy and they really stick in your head.

I agree with Gwendolyn’s sentiment though, that it’s challenging to integrate cultural music without making assumptions or by putting anyone on the spot. Luckily I’m pretty familiar with my church community’s music, but there’s a very real possibility that I’ll be working with children from outside the church community in these groups and I will run into the same problem!

I think that one way of doing it would be to take those traditional melodies and the altered lyrics and include them, no matter the cultural makeup of the group – “different sounding” melodies and rhythms might be a welcome addition. For example, I was thinking of maybe altering the lyrics to support early childhood development to the refrain of a song like “Cielto Lindo” or a song like “linstead Market”. It’s definitely something I may give a try.

[Jessica Triana]

The musical culture of Boston is rich with many flavors, influenced by multiple predominant cultures and subcultures. Working in a hospital, we see families and individuals from all over the United States and internationally (mostly Africa, Middle East, South America). When working with very little ones,the traditional children’s songs and rhymes are commonplace, but they may vary slightly based on the family’s regional origin. Parents’ listening preferences and habits definitely influence the children that I work with. I have gradually become more accustomed to a 4 year old singing Nicki Minaj or Drake to me.
Gwen, you bring up a fantastic point about the need to be sensitive when bringing in music that is different from the therapist’s home culture. It seems less presumptuous of me to bring in songs from a variety of cultures when I am running groups. Otherwise, I tend to let the patient and family let me know their preferences. Similar to Alice, I like to blend Latin or African-based rhythms with English lyrics adapted to meet the objectives of an intervention. The children in my daycare and early school-age groups really enjoy singing and playing to songs in other languages (favorites include one of the many varieties of “Ram Sam Sam”, “La Bamba”, and the somewhat odd “Atirei o Pau ao Gato”). I also have a standard I-IV-V hello/goodbye song in English, but we will sing the actual greetings and salutations in many different languages.

[Anonymous]

Thinking about the cultures of your community is a wonderful way to work from a cultural music therapy perspective. It’s so important, especially in this day an age, to honor and celebrate our diversity. It also helps to bring communities together through their children. I enjoyed reading each of your perspectives on your communities.

[Cassandra Reyna]

Having moved to Virginia just three months ago, I will speak toward the traditional and culture music of the Detroit area, where I earned my degree and completed my internship. This area was incredibly diverse, boasting the largest Arabic population in the nation. I utilized syncopated guitar rhythms in order to accompany a mother who sang to her infant in Arabic. Gospel music was also requested often, as well as traditional children’s songs such as Old McDonald, Baby Beluga, Twinkle Twinkle, etc….

[Marchele Gilman]

Traditional music in my area of Eastern Oregon consists mostly of traditional folk songs and songs like “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, “This Old Man”, and “Shoo, Fly”. We have a large hispanic population, as well as a small Basque and Japanese population. I have not worked with the 0-5 population in a preschool setting, so I can’t say what is being taught in this area. However, I would expect that traditional songs from hispanic culture as well as traditional songs in English and Spanish are taught.

[Alison Albino]

A lot of the songs that people have already mentioned are very similar to the songs that I have noticed are a part of the cultural and traditional music in my community. The Wheels on the Bus, Old McDonald, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain are what I have really found successful as familiar music with children.

[Beth McLaughlin]

I’m sorry to be late to this discussion. I was away last week and just completed the 3rd week of the training. As far as the cultural and traditional songs for young children in my community (suburban upstate New York), I would have to agree with Rachel and Alison. The songs I hear children singing and listening to include the traditional songs of our childhood already mentioned. I rarely use them in my practice, however, as I have always focused on creating original melodies and lyrics for the students with whom I was working. I had an intern once though who had an amazing repertoire of songs from Woodie Guthrie and Appalachia. He did a wonderful job of adapting those songs in a way that was appropriate to the students’ developmental level while introducing them to our rich cultural folk heritage.

[Elizabeth Ferguson]

The cultural songs for early learning are traditional, Old MacDonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle etc. Several families I work with know and love music together songs. One of which I heard in the training this week! (Music In Me) How neat! I miss the rich cultural experience I had within my music therapy internship at Shriners Burn Hospital in Boston. It was amazing learning music from all over the world!

[Flora Whitmore]

Where I live, it’s a odd mishmash. I get a HUGE amount of kidzbop and pop music-loving kiddos, but there are a few beloved musical entertainers with songs that I have encountered across the board. Laurie Berkner is a huge one, as well as songs from Music Together (we have several providers in vermont, including one of my dear friends and colleagues) as well as the traditional favorites and Raffi songs. I have brought with me a lot of culturally diverse songs from the populations I worked with in Toronto. One of my colleagues in my internship was Granadan and brought a lot of her childhood songs into our peer supervision times, and I was raised with Yiddish and Israeli folk songs and Irish /Quebecois fiddling so a lot of those songs influence my work. Also a LARGE amount of country music. No matter where I go in rural vermont, I always run into Blake Shelton lovers, without fail. I worked with three siblings who all loved him and always asked to earn “Home.” My work at the behavioral school involved a great deal of pop music, country and alternative. Linkin Park and Hollywood Undead were household names. I struggle with the rise of KidzBop and the normalization of pop music with small children. I think there are good reasons for using the traditional songs in addition. The newer ones may have very catchy beats, but the skills taught in older songs, I find, seem kind of crucial to development. However, I do use a huge amount of old school Disney songs unabashedly, with positive results. And Frozen. Because it’s very relatable. But I initially really struggled with it.

[RaeAnna Zinniel]

In my area there is little diversity. There is the white german heritage culture and then the hispanic culture. So american folk songs are the norm with the addition of polka music.

[Ayelet Weiss]

I live in NYC where there is obviously a very diverse population. Also, very often in my area, nannies are the ones accompanying children to music groups so there is that added diversity as well. It would definitely be useful to learn different types of songs and to explore different scales. I personally grew up with a mix of middle eastern music and traditional I-IV-V songs as I was born in Israel but raised by American parents.

[Virginia Caldwell]

I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago. The ethnic landscape changed a lot from birth to when I went to college. Initially it was middle class white suburbia. When I went to high school it was more diverse with more of a Black and Hispanic American influence. After college I moved back and it is now more middle to low income families with very limited resources. The community has lost a lot of it’s diversity.

I grew up in an older family filled with great aunts and they were all avid piano players and singers so my music experience is very diverse. I was exposed to the oldie but goodies, jazz, rock, folk, blues and symphony. My work initially was in hospice so my background exposure was a great help to serving those clients. Transitioning to the other spectrum of life will be interesting for me. I know the classic old school “kids” songs but am out of touch with Raffi and kids pop and what ever else there is now a days that is main stream. I wish I knew more children’s cultural music. I do have a few Spanish and polish resources from living and working in Chicago. I look forward to expanding that as I work in the community.

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