Robert Greenberg

Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author

How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Three

To this day, should I hear “Rag Doll” sung by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, I am swept back to summertime in Beach Haven on the South Jersey shore, circa 1965, sights and smells and all. Oh, the incredible power of music.

To this day, should I hear “Rag Doll” sung by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, I am swept back to summertime in Beach Haven on the South Jersey shore, circa 1965, sights and smells and all. Oh, the incredible power of music.

It has always seemed to me that there are two essentially different kinds of music. The first is what we might call “generational music”: the contemporary music we hear and sing and play while we’re growing up – music that represents our childhood; our innocence; our coming of age; our sexual awakening; our friends and our first loves and first heartbreaks. For me, that music – the music that can still transport me back to places otherwise forgotten – includes Peter, Paul, and Mary; the Beatles; Jimi Hendrix; Simon and Garfunkel; Led Zeppelin; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Chicago; and Blood, Sweat and Tears.

What this means is that every generation of younguns will have its own music. Our job as parents/adults is not to denigrate our children’s music (which can only prove to our kids that we are the doddering old fools they already believe us to be) but rather, to SUPPLEMENT their listening with the other kind of music, meaning EVERYTHING ELSE.

By “everything else” I really do mean “everything else.” Tomorrow, let’s talk turkey about what constitutes “everything else”.