References

Custodero, L. A. (2008). Living Jazz, Learning Jazz. General Music Today,

22(1), 24-29.

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Living Jazz, Learning Jazz

Thoughts on a Responsive Pedagogy of Early Childhood Music

In this article, jazz music is used as a lens through which early childhood music

pedagogy is viewed, specifically thinking about swing and improvisation--the

listening and responding to what is heard and seen, and the openness to

possibility. These two concepts are defined by prominent jazz musicians and

are traced in the child development literature as inherent ways of relating both

to both music and others. Practice that involves finding innovative and mutually

supportive ways to share musical space creates opportunities for collective

growth; attending to the spaces between thematic, predetermined structures

creates opportunities to observe and engage with spontaneous moments of

musical innovation. Such an approach to teaching and learning suggests a

theoretical framework attuned to the connections between jazz and childhood

development that translates to artistically authentic classroom strategies

relevant to students. Direct and indirect implications are offered.

Keywords: jazz; music; early childhood; pedagogy; education

The room was vibrant with the energy of ten 4-year-olds and their parents--each

one experiencing the syncopated melody, leaning into the flatted third with their

voices (some even visibly with their shoulders swaying), and bouncing to the

regularity of the walking bass line. The children were gathered around the piano

to "sing in" the lesson, as was their weekly ritual, and this particular tune

provoked an especially engaged participation. Ms. Susie jumped at the chance

to do what good teachers do, that is, to put a label on her students' experience.

"We call that music JAZZ! Does anyone know what jazz music is?" Renee

Keithley's hand was thrust in the air with an intensity that expressed her

certainty. "Yes, Renee?" said Ms. Susie. "I know what jazz is," she replied. "It's

that big fish that lives in the ocean and eats people!" (For those too young to

remember, this was 1983, not long after the release of the Steven Spielberg film

to which Renee was referring, Jaws)

What do we glean from this story? Among a list of possible lessons are that (a)

there are many schools of thought as to what defines jazz, and (b) children

absorb and interpret based on myriad experiences and tend to see the world

differently than adults. In this article, I invite a reconsideration of two complex

and often misunderstood phenomena, early childhood and jazz music, using

each as a lens with which to better understand the other. Jazz can be

understood through its harmonic construction, its sociohistorical roots, and the

display of technical fireworks by solo performers. Yet when viewed through its

meaningfulness to young children, one gets closer to the common humanistic

qualities that jazz music might reflect. Similarly, when viewing early childhood

educational settings, we do well if we can teach with a jazz-like sensitivity to the

people and the music with which we engage. The first time I watched the Jazz

at Lincoln Center (JALC) Orchestra rehearse, I was struck by the familiar sense

of wonder and delight I saw in these players, not only in their own rewarding

performances but in the playing of other musicians as well.

Rather than a killer shark, when I think of jazz I have a mental image of Herlin

Riley, the former drummer with the JALC Orchestra, with his playful gestures

and expressions, ever responsive to the rest of the band while pushing their

creative potential. This image aids in my perception of jazz as a practiced art

form in which players respond to moments of musical suggestion that are

facilitated by the setting and offered up and received by fellow inhabitants. In

jazz, music making is characterized by a resistance to, and often a triumph

over, limitations imposed by both sociological conditions and notes preserved

on the page. Such performance draws from cultivated expertise and is informed

by a lifetime of experiences.

Alternatively, young children's music making could be defined as "uncultivated

expertise"; described by professional musicians I've interviewed as "raw" and

"ancestral" (Custodero, in press-a), it reflects a certain closeness to the

essences of musical meaning. Responding in artful practice to the perceived

affordances (or resources) in objects and people in their surroundings, young

children are generally unfettered by adult-learned and culturally-imposed

limitations about what is "right" and "wrong" when it comes to making music.

What links these two artistic practices is the attentiveness to the moments of

performance--the listening and responding to what is heard and seen, and the

openness to possibility. These are the qualities of teaching and learning that

suggest a theoretical framework attuned to the connections between jazz and

childhood development; they also inform a pedagogical approach that translates

to artistically authentic classroom strategies relevant to students.

Swing Lessons: "Being With" Each Other

and With the Music

At the heart of jazz is swing, a multifarious word that describes the fluidity of

rhythmic drive that both moves us forward while wistfully holding on to the past.

Swing is also about how the parts of a jazz ensemble work together, the rhythm

section providing the foundation for other instruments through the harmonic

direction provided by the bass, the rhythmic momentum in the drums, and the

warp and woof of textures created in the piano accompaniment.

This goodness of fit between instruments in a jazz ensemble can be compared

to the relationship between child and parent. Research on the mental health of

new mothers found that symptoms of depression were accompanied by

asynchronous communication between mother and infant and that when the

clinical symptoms disappeared, the renewed health was reflected in the more

typical metric turn-taking style of healthy mothers and infants (Field, 1998). The

interactive speech patterns between mother and child are typically regular

enough to suggest the drawing of bar lines--parents and infants fitting together.

Music joins us with others in mutual shared experiences, creating a sense of

belonging that teaches us how to "be with" others. In a study with families

(Custodero, in press-b), a mother told us about requiring special medical care

before each of her two children were delivered. She described the emotions

experienced when she was lying in the hospital bed and felt them respond to

the music to which she was listening as "a tender moment when I could

remember, 'Ooh, you're in there, and you like this' ...."

French violinist and composer Hodeir said, "Swing is possible … only when the

beat, though it seems perfectly regular, gives the impression of moving

inexorably ahead (like a train that keeps moving at the same speed, but is still

being drawn ahead by its locomotive)" (cited in O'Meally, 1998, p. iv). This

description could also be true for our images of young children's movement

response to jazz. Their "being with" the music was described eloquently by a

jazz musician and teacher named Jason Kennedy, who was working with 2- to

5-year-olds in a parent-child program at JALC called WeBop! In an interview, he

shared the following about what he was learning about his experience with this

new-to-him population:

You can never underestimate how a child will perceive something, especially,

music … When kids are listening and interpreting something, it becomes like

real, … their bodies become this emotional thing … I see these kids listening to

my guitar or a recording and they really become the sound. If Charlie Parker is

playing fast, they become a fast saxophone. There's no limit to what they can or

cannot be. They can become sound itself. They take it, they listen to it, they say

that's mine, "I am it."

Young children's ability to "be with" music to that degree provides lessons for us

as teachers. One way we can learn more about this is to carefully observe them

in action, perhaps videotaping with the focused objective of becoming aware of

how children are expressing musicality in their movement. In my own practice

this has taught me how varied children's responses are--they "become" the tune

in their own, personal style. The many ways children invent to "be with" others

is of additional interest--siblings, teacher-child, parents-child groups are often

spontaneously formed as they listen and respond to the suggestions felt in the

music. Table 1 lists some ways to engage children in swing; these activities

might prove especially fruitful to capture on videotape for further reflection.

How do we implement the "being with" spirit of responsive pedagogy? The

solutions may be as varied as the children we teach, as we struggle to find

ways to fit together. We know that early childhood music classes swing when

they honor movement within a mutually satisfying collective. Consciously

seeking opportunities for young children to show what they know in the context

of rich musical experiences and meaningful communities might be a good

starting place. For the youngest children, this community collective is the

parent-child dyad, where the two components interact like a rhythm section,

fitting together by carefully listening and responding to shared goals. For older

students, peer interactions deserve our attention in program and curricular

planning. Attending to the moments of pedagogical potential, we can be ready

to engage in the varied syncopations, grounded in the common enjoyment of

music.

Swing describes the overall feeling of jazz. In the next section, we explore

"being with" from an active stance and looking at improvisational music making

from the jazz and early childhood perspectives.

Improvisation Lessons: Collective and Emergent

Berliner (1994) describes jazz as being difficult to define in that it is both

collective and emergent--it brings together by virtue of its rhythmic "groove" and

sets apart by individual responses to the immediate context. The environment in

which jazz occurs makes a difference in how the music is created and

perceived; additionally, the musical unfolding itself will determine outcomes as

the layers of sound show themselves in real time, leading in directions

unpredictable and even unimaginable. Like the swing feel of music,

improvisation, at the heart of musical doing, calls for dual attentiveness to both

human communication and resources.

Improvisation is about using your past experiences and immediate

attentiveness to the sounds around you and the sounds you make to create

music in real time. Adult musicians who improvise are occasionally insulted

when young children's spontaneous music making is referred to as

improvisation. However, if we take a broad view of what Berliner calls

repertoire--compositional tools and vocabulary patterns (p. 3), we may find

useful connections. Like someone who has transcribed a Lester Young solo

note-by-note, young children will repeat over and over the attractive sounds in

their sonic environments, striving to imitate exactly so as to know completely,

before using it to construct a soundtrack to a story or in some other musically

functional way. In New York City this means that when riding public

transportation, we hear a lot of high-pitched descending melodic thirds intoned

on scat-like syllables ("bing bong," sometimes followed by "Stay clear of the

closing doors please!"). Children spending much time in more rural

surroundings might pick up on their own soundtracks of everyday life, as would

children who spend hours at the computer or playing video games. These

sounds often become repertoire for scatological exploration and play, new

musical vocabulary patterns being mastered for later application (Young &

Giles, 2007).

Studies on children's spontaneous song offer an interesting link to Berliner's

(1994) duality of jazz performance. First, the idea of familiarity and novelty in

combination happens frequently with 3- to 4-year-olds in what is known as

"composite" song. A child may be singing about how she misses her mommy,

with invented words and tune, and then break into a familiar "E-I-E-I-O!"

Children's spontaneous singing is also very different depending on the social

context. Private songs, sung in a solitary context, tend to be amorphous and

expressively varied (large melodic range with varied pitch durations). If the song

is a more public expression, it is metric, short and repeated, often using

onomatopoeia (Moorhead & Pond, 1978). A typical sound on many U.S.

playgrounds is sol-mi-la-sol-mi, leading some researchers to believe that it may

be some type of "Ur"-song (Bjørkvold, 1989). Such context sensitivity may be

interpreted as the child's versions of collective and emergent improvisation.

What does improvisatory teaching look like? If Berliner's descriptions are

accurate, it looks a bit like a jazz ensemble: "Players are perpetually occupied:

They must take in the immediate inventions around them while leading their

own performances toward emerging musical images …" (1994,p. 12). In Table

2, find suggestions for activities that reveal the improvisation in music

educational settings for young children. Again, videotaping such experiences

allows for further reflection on the nature of children's musicality.

Pedagogical Lessons: Revolutionary and Traditional

O'Meally (1998) writes, "How are we to confront the broad problem that jazz, by

definition, is both revolutionary and traditional, many-voiced and many-storied;

that jazz acts as a frame through which many expressions of life can be heard,

as a stage on which many stories can be projected?" (p. xiii). I might ask the

same question about our teaching--how do we meet the needs of the many-

storied students we encounter? And how do we create a frame inclusive

enough for all to find their groove, that every story could swing? The answers

are best discovered through thoughtful preparation and responsive, in-the-

moment attunement and action, a result of listening and observing all the music

making going on in early childhood settings.

Planning With Depth and Thoughtfulness: Providing Shared Spaces

Marsalis (1995) explains the serious business of jazz performance: "This kind of

improvisation is what jazz musicians raised to an art through deep study and

contemplation" (p. 337). Artful teaching requires spending time considering the

students we are teaching, keeping them in our minds as we design

environments and activities to best suit their strengths. Thinking again about the

idea of "swing" as the goodness of fit between individual contributions and the

collective experience, and "improvisation" as the way in which our personal

expression draws from the collective and our surroundings, we can consider

age-related frameworks. Infants swing as one with their caregivers; their major

quest is to seek mutuality--to join and belong. We see and hear it in their

attempts to imitate and to respond in order to maintain a musical dialogue with

adults. They are learning what it means to "be with," and so having them bring

their own "babies" such as dolls or stuffed animals to their music class is a way

to support their participation as caregivers themselves, as they play reciprocal

roles of child and teacher (or caregiver). They are learning to share space and

create new ensembles for musical growth.

Infants' primary way of meaning making with music is through relationship. In

toddlerhood, that foundation remains strong and is highly influenced by the

increased physical mobility of children by the time they reach 2 years of age.

Still learning from "being with" caregivers as partners in activities, they also

have new ways to demonstrate how they can be with the music: They embody

it; as Jason Kennedy remarked, they "are it." This has implications for how we

design programs and how sensitive we need to be about what types of music

we use. Highly dramatic music may be difficult, as children embody the tension

and often cannot separate the metaphorical from the real. Used to help

transverse shared spaces such as a move to a new situation, a song can act as

transitional object. In other words, that "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" can move

from the 2-year-old class to the 3-year-old class helps children to see

themselves as transitioning as well.

Preschool-aged children are able to share space in a more abstract way, that is,

by sharing the cultural values of adults. With better-developed language skills,

they share a recognizable vocabulary that serves to reinforce conceptual

information; adults can recognize musical behaviors as more closely aligned to

what they consider to be music and can therefore act as purposeful music

teachers. Starting at around age 4 or 5 years, children's representation of sound

in space changes from a focus on body movement to acting more directly with

musical objects and symbols as tools for expression. Addressing these

developmental strengths as we plan and conceptualize our teaching practices

provides a strong framework from which we can responsively attend to

moments of diversion. Such improvisatory moments are only possible when

members of the ensemble have opportunities for initiating activity themselves,

and for going "off [Teacher's designated] task" to reveal the unexpected

transposition or melodic variation that swings with mutual surprise and delight.

Teaching Responsively: Providing Spaces Between

Romare Bearden, a contemporary jazz-inspired visual artist known for his

collage interpretations of artists and places in New York City, would listen to

Earl Hines's music "until he couldn't hear the notes, just the spaces between the

notes" (Harris-Kelly, 2004). His inspiration came from possibility, not from

certitude. This idea of spaces between the notes means spaces for listening to

what just came before and spaces to envision what might be heard next; it is

listening for possibilities. Such imagining involves playing with materials, not in

predefined ways, but in ways that emerge from relating with them. These ideas

flow naturally from children's interest in sound and their physical inclinations--

important information for music teachers to know about the children they are

educating.

I remember clearly my own discovery of the spaces between--activity that fell

between the sequenced lesson activities. I was collecting data for my

dissertation and viewing hours of video of classes for signs of what looked like

flow experience (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1997; Custodero, 1998, 2002,

2005). The more carefully I looked, the more I saw how they were doing their

best to keep the process swinging for themselves, and how that involved

improvisation. The most salient example was a dance of rhythm patterns, about

10 seconds' worth, which I had completely missed in its live iteration. I saw

many such improvisatory moments as a result of reflecting on the repeated

observations of musical activities, when children played with musical materials

to learn about them, such as inventing new ways to perform a keyboard tune

they had mastered, such as playing with their eyes closed.

These experiences changed my teaching dramatically, and I began to listen and

observe more and more closely, learning about myself and my students along

the way. Listening to the chord changes, and turns, contributing to the rhythmic

drive, I continue striving to attend and attune to my fellow musicians. Although

I'll never be Herlin Riley, I resonate with what Louis Armstrong wrote about

swing music and see it as a pedagogical model that honors the student as a

melodic (or idea) interpreter:

You will have known the melody very well but you will never have heard it

played that way and will never hear it played just that way again.... [Swing

music] will make you feel keen--waiting on edge for the "hot" variations you feel

are coming up at any moment. That is because you recognize, maybe without

knowing it, that something really creative is happening right before you.

(Armstrong, 1936/1999, p. 75)

Table 1 Ideas for Guiding Swing Activities

• Free movement to favorite jazz recordings: "Move like the music tells you!"

Tunes with exaggerated sounds in call and response format ("St. Louis Blues")

or with repeated melodic or bass figures ("Moten Swing") are especially

appealing for movement responses.

• Choreographed movement to swing recordings: "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It

Ain't Got That Swing" ( 3- to 4-year-olds with parents, 5- to 8-year-olds with

peers)

Select pieces with a repetitive form, such as "It Don't Mean a Thing." Plan the

movement--it might involve walking around in a circle (while embodying the

spirit of the music), folding into the center and expanding out of the circle on the

B section and improvising movement during the solos. During class, teach

movement through demonstration rather than explanation.

• Jam sessions

Choose instruments and play together!

Table 2 Ideas for Guiding Improvisation Activities

• Scat familiar songs

After listening to a model, such as Dizzy Gillespie's "Oop-Popa-Dah," try singing

a familiar song, pretending you forgot the words (after Armstrong's story of how

scat was "born") or pretending you are an instrument, asking how would a

trumpet sound if it sang this tune?

• Have conversations without words (just pitched syllables)

• Finger puppet jazz operas

Improvisatory singing might evolve from simple narratives teachers can facilitate

simply by saying "Once upon a time there was a frog who had a low croaky

song. It went like this:" Teacher pauses long enough for a child to take up the

story and only interjects with invitations "and then?" or "and the monkey's song

went like this" as needed.

• Collective improvisation

Use recordings to find your groove--use the voice as instrument, add body

percussion, or select instruments carefully that fit with the texture of the

recording. Add one instrument at a time to the groove, demonstrating one

simple way to play that instrument in order to scaffold students who need a

model, expecting that your given pattern may be ignored or expanded.

• Improvisational space

Providing free play spaces for children with simple and interesting instrumental

resources allows for purposeful instrumental exploration to move from "What

does this do?" to "What can I do with this?" Leave any materials from guided

activities in the space to facilitate the emergence of improvisational thought.

PHOTO (COLOR)

PHOTO (COLOR)

References

Armstrong, L. (1936/1999). What is swing? In R. Walser (Ed.), Keeping time:

Readings in jazz history (pp. 73-76). New York: Oxford University Press.

Berliner, P. F. (1994). Thinking in jazz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berliner, D. (2001). Give and take: The collective conversation of jazz

performance. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Creativity in performance (pp. 9-41).

Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Bjørkvold, J. (1989). The muse within: Creativity, communication, song, and

play from childhood through maturity. New York: HarperCollins.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement in

everyday life. New York: Basic Books.

Custodero, L. A. (1998). Observing flow in young children's music learning.

General Music Today, 12(1), 21-27.

Custodero, L. (2002). Seeking challenge, finding skill: Flow experience and

music education. Arts Education Policy Review, 103(3), 3-9.

Custodero, L. A. (2005). Observable indicators of flow experience: A

developmental perspective of musical engagement in young children from

infancy to school age. Music Education Research, 7(2), 185-209.

Custodero, L. A. (2008, July). Responsive pedagogy: The influences of infants

and young children on adult music teaching and performance. Symposium

conducted at the International Society of Music Education World Conference,

Bologna, Italy.

Custodero, L. A. (in press-a). Intimacy and reciprocity in improvisatory musical

performance: Pedagogical lessons from adult artists and young children. In S.

Malloch & C. Trevarthen (Eds.), Communicative musicality. Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press.

Custodero, L. A. (in press-b). Musical portraits, musical pathways: Stories of

meaning making in the lives of six families. In J. Kerchner and C. Abril (Eds.),

Music learning and teaching throughout our lives. New York: Rowman and

Littlefield.

Field, T. (1998). Maternal depression effects on infants and early interventions.

Preventive Medicine, 27(2), 200-203.

Harris-Kelley, D. (2004). Revisitng Romare Bearden's art of improvisation. In R.

O'Mealley, B. H. Edwards, & F. J. Griffin (Eds.), Uptown conversation: The new

jazz studies (pp. 249-255). New York: Columbia University Press.

Marsalis, W. (1995). Marsalis on music. New York: W. W. Norton.

Moorhead, G., & Pond, D. (1978). Music of young children. Santa Barbara, CA:

Pillsbury Foundation for the Advancement of Music Education. (Reprinted from

the 1941-1951 editions)

O'Meally, R. (1998). Preface. In The jazz cadence of American culture (pp. ix-

xvi). New York: Columbia University Press.

Young, S., & Giles, J. (2007). Towards a revised understanding of young

children's musical activities: Reflections from the "day in the life" project.

Current Musicology, 84, 79-99.

~~~~~~~~

By Lori A. Custodero

Lori A. Custodero, associate professor of music and music education and

program coordinator, has established an early childhood music concentration at

Teachers College, Columbia University, that integrates pedagogy and research

through both theory and practice. E-mail: custodero@tc.edu.

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