Singing
is a children’s
human right
by
Oscar Escalada
Human rights
Human rights are those
“instrumental conditions” that
allow the individual his own
realization.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
UN, París, September 1948.
declaration of the rights of
the child
•
Article 2.
•
The child shall be given opportunities to enable him to develop physically,
mentally, morally, spiritually and socially .
UN, 1989
INSTRUMENTAL
CONDITIONS
AND PERSONAL
DEVELOPING
Every child that can speak,
can sing.
What is singing?
Singing is to produce vocal sounds with
successive changes of heights, dynamic and
speed modifications in a musical chain.
“...in a musical chain.”
• It is referred to esthetic criteria involving
historic periods,
styles,
cultures,
schools, etc.
Copla de ordeño
María Olga Piñeros
Colombia
Percussion school of Karnataka
India
Konakkol Style
Barbanadir (“Gallop”)
Anatoli Kuular
Tuva Singer
(overtones)
Cecilia Bartoli
Lascia ch’io pianga (second part)
G. F. Händel
The skill to reproduce sounds adjusted to
pre-stablished heights is what we call
TUNNING
FACTORS INVOLVED IN TUNNING
Psychomotricity
TUNNING
Audioperception
Psychomotricity
Orders coming from the brain to the muscles
involved in phonation.
AudiopercepTiOn
Recognition and control of brain stimulation
through hearing playback of heights.
Dr. Clifford MadsenDirector Music
Investigation CenterUniversity of La Florida Tampa
He discovered a hearing loss of sounds coming out
from his mother’s language in children of six month of
age.
This research shows the
selective capacity in child’s
audition.
The child imitates for learning.
The child takes his mother's speech inflections of her
language and region.
To express ourselves in speaking we use tones,
it depends on how they are used, maintain the
tension of the sentence (arsis) or its conclusion
(thesis).
The range between both ways of speaking can be measured
Example:
Cada comarca en la tierra tiene un rasgo prominente.
(Each region on Earth has a prominent characteristic)
Tessitura:
Cada comarca en la tierra tiene un rasgo prominente.
Investigation
CONICET
Prof. María Gabriela Mónaco
University of La Plata.
Children’s ranges
Singing voice
Minor sixth
Speaking voice
Major seventh
ROUTE OF SPOKEN
WORD
Motor cortex
(gives the order)
Brocca’s area
(processes)
Wernicke’s area
(decodes)
Auditive cortex
(receives the information)
Route of the spoken word
This would be the same route that uses the production of
tones, ie singing.
(Dres. Wong & others)
AMUSIA
But...
AMUSIA
(Tone deafness)
(From the Greek "a", deprivation, and "mousa" music).
Disorder of musical capability.
It is a tonal congenital deafness.
Dr. Jordi Peña-Casanova
Neurología de la conducta y neuropsicología (2007)
“...of the same nature as aphasia and coinciding with it.”
Afasia: Loss of the ability of speak
Dres. Psyche Loui, David Alsop and Gottfried Schlaug
Harvard University
Tone deafness: a new disconnection syndrome?
The Journal of Neuroscience
August 2009
Arcuate fasciculus
Result:
Individuals are born without the ability to
repeat tones.
But...
Neuroplasticity
Definition
Neuroplasticity allows the neurons in the brain to compensate for
injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new
The brain's
abilityor
toto
reorganize
itself
byenvironment.
forming new neural
situations
changes in
their
connections throughout life.
Neuroplasticity
According to Canadian psychiatrist
Norman Doidge, neuroplasticity "is one
of the greatest discoveries of the
twentieth century."
Neuroplasticity
Magazine of the Association of Physicians
of India
September, 2012
Localizationism to Neuroplasticity---The Evolution of Metaphysical
Neuroscience
Sourya Acharya, Samarth Shukla, SN Mahajan, SK Diwan
Localizationism:
Brocca: “One function, one localization”
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity (or cortical re-mapping) is
the changing of neurons, organization of
their networks and their function via new
experiences.
Neuroplasticity
The brain has mechanisms of auto-restoration.
If an area in the retina is injured produces a region without
response. Immediately adjacent neurons stimulate to the
injured area recovering partially or completely lost
function.
Neuroplasticity
As well as a rehabilitation in which there is partial or
total loss of traction, you can develop in the individual
alternative avenues to wholly or partially reverse the
pathology by exercising and a proper plan of cartesian
work: go from the simple to the complex.
Therefore...
Every child that can speak...
Can sing!
Mirror Neurons
Neurons that allows the individual to instinctively and
immediately understand what other people are
experiencing. This discovery has radically altered the way
we think about our brains and ourselves, particularly our
social selves.
You see a stranger stub her toe and you immediately
flinch in sympathy, or you notice a friend wrinkle up his
face in disgust while tasting some food and suddenly
your own stomach recoils at the thought of eating.
Mirror Neurons
Choral activity may be helpful for those children as it may develop a
certain degree of emotional sustain, belonging feelings and
acceptation of what they do giving them socially sensitive
environments.
The common situation of those children were that they had alcoholic
parents offering them a violent environment and at the age of 7
they left their homes.
Researchers seriously believe that this neurons are the basis of
communication and empathy.
But if you don’t develop them, they will disappear at early age.
Researchers focussed on the lack of this neurons as the reason
why some cases of children’s killed by other children in Liverpool,
Great Britain in 1993 and in Maldonado, Uruguay in 2009 continued
playing after the murder without any remorse of what they did to
their friends.
Experts’
opinion
Friedrich Nietzsche (Germany,1844-1900)
“Without music, life would be a mistake”
Dimitri Kabalevsky (Russia,1904-1987)
Music and Education (1988)
“...every class should be a choir.”
Doreen Rao (Canada)
We will sing! (1993)
“Every child has a natural ability for music”
Choral singing is a social, sensitive and
supportive activity.
Conference of early education and develop of human brain
Declaration of Chile - March 2007
"Children, like all people, are fundamentally social beings
who learn more effectively in socially sensitive
environments and have a responsive capacity via their
interactions with responsible adults and other children."
Enhances learning
Survey conducted by Harris Interactive 2007
Schools with music programs (and choral
activities)
graduation rate 90,2 %.
Schools without music programs (nor
choral activities)
graduation rate 72,9 %
People earning $ 150.000 per year in
USA, 83 % had music programs
Enhances learning
The College Board has found that students involved in
music scored 63 percent higher on the verbal section and
44 percent higher on the math section of the SAT than
those with no music participation.
The SAT is a standardized test for most college
admissions in the United States.
The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the
College Board, a private, nonprofit organization in the
United States.
In 2009, the College Board reported that students who
took four years of music classes scored, on average, 91
points higher on the SAT than students who didn’t.
Musical training, to speak and to read.
Drs. Wong; Skoe; Russo; Dees y Kraus
Northwestern University 2007
The alterations of the brain in the multisensory process of
musical training, uses the same connections as those
needed to speak and to read.
Influence on drug addiction tendency
•
•
Researchers found that drug addiction has 70 % less
addicts in individuals with choral activities than in
those who have not.
The Minnesota Teen Challenge Institute has daily
choral activity in order to rescue young people and
adults from drugs and alcohol.
Choir: Team or family?
Dr. Mary Alice Stollak and Dr. Gary
Stollak
Choral Journal 1991
It works as a team but it is a family
1) Non competitive
2) Supports affectively
3) Develops a degree of membership
Who sings scares away
his woes
Why singing is good?
It is a social, sensitive and supportive activity
It stimulates the individual effort to obtain a common goal
It is a non competitive activity in itself
Enhances learning
It influences on the drug addiction tendency
Mirror neurons involved in the empathy may be enhanced in
its development through choral activity.
TO PLAY
Jean Piaget: recognized the value of
playing as the way by which children
achieve their goals.
Freedom can only be
achieved through
knowledge
Therefore
Take out of your mind
the idea that a
child cannot sing
As John Lennon said...
...I hope some day you’ll join us
Take out of your mind
the idea that a
child cannot sing
and the world will be as one.
MUCHAS GRACIAS
Contact
www.oescalada.com.ar
escalada@isis.unlp.edu.ar