``But as Joanna pointed out, we're also missing youthful exposure in our schools. My generation was treated to annual trips to the symphony or opera for a city-wide kids program...'' drogers
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LA had the same system, except opera. No opera for some reason. But we did go to the ballet. We also had a city wide music program with instruments that could be checked out for a semester. The schools offered an optional music class for an hour a day from about fourth grade on through high school.
Also there was a fairly extensive record collection at the school libraries which were semi-centralized. The teachers checked these out and then played them for their classes and taught from them. This is how I first heard Peter and the Wolf which really fascinated me at about eight.
Thinking back on it, that was a pretty rich little music introduction at a fairly early age. At home we had just about all of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, with some Bach, Listz, Chopin, and then a few of the moderns, mainly Debussy and Stravinsky.
But once again, my experiences seemed a little out of the ordinary. My mother was a music teacher part-time along with her regular teaching assignments. During the early post-war she had worked in a record store and brought home everything she could afford---mostly 40s-50s jazz like Fats Waller, Art Tatum, some big band stuff, and small esembles from the thires. I thought Fats Waller was funny and his hamming appealed to my boyish sense of humor.
A few years later my stepfather decided to learn guitar, so we had music at home of a sorts. This was about the time I was trying to learn the violin. I was in the second row of the school orchestra for our stunning performance of Strangers in Paradise and other pop tunes of the era! I hated that tune. It was hard to play and sounded terrible since the melody line was very tough to get right.
So, I concluded from these experience that the way to get kids interested in music is to just play it and enjoy it yourself. If they like it, they will ask about it or dance to it or skip around for fun or maybe ask for an instrument to learn---all the usual signs.
``...I also think things could be shaken up a little in other ways to get people interested...'' DC
I do too. But the way I would do it is by opening up the whole professional production of classical music and city symphony orchestras with really cheap open seats for the late stages of the reheresals, mini concerts program like SF used to do in Stern Grove during the summer, also bring some of the musicians who were interested, into the schools for mini workshop tours and talks about music, their instruments, a little history, some fun things to do with music. For older kids, maybe a serious explanation of their practice and rehersal routines to prepare for a performance, the working stuff of a musician.
For many years Berkeley High School had a jazz band that managed to get some minor acclaim and competed in state and national competitions. For a couple of years they opened some of the sets at one of the local jazz festivals.
My last music concert was a speciality program on late Renaissance-early Baroque last summer where I got in free because I knew one of the musicians and helped break down one of the harpsicords and load it in the back of the car. I found out the harpsicord player had built her own from a custom kit and we took hers to her apartment. The other big instrument had to be rented from a speciality place. It was a small bellows organ (I think a Renaissance era model) that could be carried by two people with long handles that slipped into holes in the fancy decorated sides. It had been used for the basso contino line. This one had an electric pump. In the original, a boy sat on the floor and worked the leather bellows with wooden handles while Mister Fancy Pants played.
Again, I think this view working view of the arts is what more kids and grown-ups need to be exposed to so they can see the `workings' of the arts. I would much rather sit in a studio and talk/argue and smoke/drink while a friend painted/fucked around or sit in an almost empty theater and watch dance rehersals and practice, or hang after dinner next to a piano with my wine glass and listen to friends fool around---asking them to show me the difference between the middle eastern scales and the western ones--or at the other end of the spectrum as it were to show me some of the things that Hanns Eisler did to build scores for Brecht and other German Expressionist theater. Yes, I have two very cool music friends. They live on the edge, just a few weeks ahead of the next paycheck.
BTW these few informal piano sessions on Eisler did wonders for my conceptual grasp of Weimar and Leo Strauss, whom I am absolutely certain hated Eisler---provided Leo ever listened to music which I seriously doubt. Needless to say, Eisler was blacklisted by HUAC and was drummed out of LA, back to East Germany in the Cold War while snarky Leo got his first professorship at the University of Chicago.
Anyway, while I listen to various kinds of music a lot, what I really enjoy is the working view of the arts, where I can listen/watch how stuff is done.
CG