Music and music education in contemporary society

Abstract

I would like to start these reflections with what is one of the central myths among those who practice music at a professional level, especially among musicians trained in music conservatories: to dedicate themselves to music, one must possess talent. This conviction has led many people to exclude the possibility of musical experiences, whether they are of any nature. In the past, for example, it was common for teachers of music in compulsory schooling to set aside the so-called "out of tune", preventing them from participating in singing or other musical activities. The exclusion of the untouchable from singing along with other people would be based on the belief that "is born musical", fact that does not consider in any way any possibility of learning. We really wanted to give biological foundations to this attitude, this is absurd, because the use of the voice is not automatic, since it is to train numerous muscles that are activated during the emission in the song. Consequently, knowing how to sing is certainly a learning process, in this case, very complex, involving a good proportion of motor type learning. Similarly, something similar can be said about instrumental practice, which requires an enormous amount of study hours to achieve artistically interesting results. But the musicians of the West do not seem to want to accurately consider all the hours that are spent doing this exercise to become professionals.