Hey Jude
The Beatles
Painted by Snazzy Starlight
England
Voice and piano
When reading the chapter this week, I connected
to the section that discussed the creativity pieces that are inspired by world
music. In the book Teaching Music Globally, Campbell states, “It is not unheard
of, either, for young people to be prone to paint what they hear, realistically
or surrealistically, selecting colors and textures to express visually what
they have experiences by listening.” (2004, p. 210-211) In my classroom, I do
this several times of the year. I ask my
children to draw what they hear, what they think is happening or how the music
makes them feel. Every time I do this activity,
most of my students draw a scene with people, places and/or things. However, at least a few of the students just
draw colors. When it is a loud sound
they color one color, if it is quiet they choose another. When discussing this with my husband he said
it seemed like those children may have a form of synesthesia, as he does. Synesthesia is when one or our five senses are
connected to another sense. For example,
some people see colors when they hear music.
Different styles/sounds evoke different colors. Here is a video
that explains more about music and sound synesthesia.
I decided to search for a world music piece that
had an artistic, synesthetic representation.
Hey Jude is one of the most
recognizable Beatles songs. The Beatles
were one of the first British boy bands to invade America. They brought with them a new style and
created a completely new way people saw and heard music. This example of Hey Jude is the original
version. The artist in the video is a YouTube
blogger named Snazzy Starlight. She
listens to a song and then draws the colors she sees. Not everyone sees the same colors. The interesting thing about this condition is
that each child is able to associate sounds with certain colors. I did an experiment last week with my
chorus. I had them sing twinkle twinkle
little star. Then I asked them to sing
it more “purple”. As a group, they sang
a deeper, darker sound. When I asked
them to sing it more “yellow”, they made a simpler, brighter sound. I know this is not a true representation of
synesthesia, but it was a very interesting experiment.
One issue that is mentioned by Campbell is that
if the students do not know where the song comes from, they could interpret a
song one way, but it could end up being offensive to the people in that
culture. (Campbell, 2004, p. 212) When doing these types of activities in class
we must first research the songs we choose to have our students recreate in
another artistic way. In doing so we can
prevent any misunderstandings from occurring.
Campbell, P. S. (2004). Teaching music globally: experiencing music, expressing culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Staci,
ReplyDeleteI always seem to forget that the Beatles aren't an American band. They have so heavily influence American music and American popular music history that I have to remind myself that they were a British band. I have heard of synesthesia before and have even had students show signs of having it as well! I have asked students in the past to describe a song in one word and sometimes students respond with a color as their one word. It's very interesting! If I happen to ask a student to elaborate on their color of choice they often can't put it into more words, it's just green. I've also had a student get specific and describe that it wasn't just a regular green. The green she was describing was specifically a sea foam green. Seeing as I work with elementary aged students that probably have no experience or prior knowledge of synesthesia, I found that to be very interesting as well!
Hi Staci,
ReplyDeleteYour connection between our readings and synesthesia are really interesting to me. I had a good friend in college, a jazz musician, who saw colors in music. Listening to him describe a piece of music in his eyes made me so jealous that I could not see what he was seeing. Perhaps in this light, rather than asking students without synesthesia to perform something in colors, a different type of classroom activity could be conducted using the reverse order. I would be interested to see what a child would do if given a picture and asked to write a song that represents it. Obviously, an advanced level of compositional skills would be necessary, but the activity could be incredibly interesting, especially if students are able to describe their artistic decisions and compare results. Thank you for your post!
I love the Beatles! They are one of my favorite bands. They were so innovative in their music, so to use it for this is really interesting. I've heard of synesthesia, but did not know it was called this. Is synesthesia something that is rare, or do a lot people interpret music this way? I also liked the experiment that you did when asking students to sing different colors. I have observed choir directors doing this with choirs, and can change the tone of the ensemble. I also find it interesting that the sound is fairly uniform in timbre.
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