Oran Etkin: Teaching the Language of Music

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 17 May 2012 20:52

Written by Laura Blum

What do Edie Falco, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts and Harvey Keitel have in common besides Actor's Equity? Google "Oran Etkin" and find out. Judging by the raves posted on his site, they're among the ecstatic parents whose children are now mini music mavens thanks to the Grammy Award winner's imaginative instruction. 

Fairfield County parents -- and kids -- can see what the fuss is about when Oran presents PJ Jamboree: Jammin' in the Park on June 18, 2012, at Old Greenwich, Connecticut's Binney Park. (Details are at jccgreenwich.org, site of host organization JCC Greenwich.) They won't come away humming nursery rhymes. Rather, they'll be vibing to his global adventures and the melodies and rhythms he picked up along the way. 

Oran is a linguist and a language teacher. That is, if you consider music a universal language. He does. The Israeli-born, U.S.-raised musician and composer is fluent in several dialects: klezmer, West African music and jazz. His method of teaching music to newborns-to-6 year olds, "Timbalooloo," incorporates the basic grammar and vocabulary of music through games, stories, songs and dance.

Do children learn music as instinctively as verbal language? When reached for insight, Oran confirmed that children have a natural musicality. "They’re always singing -- it’s like they live in a musical." He also gave a teaser of what to expect on the 18th.

Q: What are the perils of waiting till kids are older to teach music?

A: Like spoken language, the earlier they assimilate it the better. But it's also about how we teach at an older age. You take a course and after you´ve learned all the rules, you can kind of piece something together and it kind of sounds like a sentence -- but not -- because there are mistakes.

You never see a child studying like that. We can teach all the techniques and rules about harmony, but it's not the same as internalizing it intuitively in early childhood.

Q: How do you teach music to infants?

A: For them it's more about connecting with the care-giver through rhythm and melody and starting to experience all the contrasts. Why do people enjoy music, what makes it fundamentally happen? A big part of that is all the contrasts. So you can break it down to the most fundamental contrast, which is sound versus silence. That’s kind of like a peekaboo game, if you will -- seeing versus not seeing. So even when the kids are very small, they enjoy that contrast between shaking the shaker and all of a sudden the silence when it stops.

Q: How do you teach instruments?

A: Once they’re verbal, it opens up a whole new world where we can teach them through storytelling and humor. They start to respond to silly things like the idea of a clarinet coming to the concert or class in its bed. In Wake Up, Clarinet!, I’ll tell the kids my friend Clara came and she’s really excited about being there but she's still sleepy. So I "wake up" my clarinet and she starts talking, "Ma Ma, I want Ma Ma." Pretty soon we're all singing and dancing.

Q: While learning music, what else can kids discover?

A: In a safe environment, kids can explore all the emotions they naturally feel. Music doesn’t always have to be superficially happy; there can be some kind of depth to it. For me, the deepest music has happiness and sadness and melancholy all mixed in. Kids also learn to listen to the silence and put something beautiful in there -- and then figure out how to add their own voice to create more beauty. When you think about skills for life, that’s one of the most important ones.

Q: So they can get more attuned to listening to people through music?

A: Even if you’re the CEO of a big company, what you're really doing is listening to what’s going on, and then trying to do whatever's necessary to create more beauty.

Q: Maybe they'll start listening to their parents...

A: Family therapy through music!

Q: At least they'll get good grades in History -- talk a little about how your storytelling approach gives historical and cultural context.

A: So for the older kids we´ll sing a Creole song called Eh La Bas, and there'll be a story about King Louis XIV that leads into a bit of the history of France and Louisiana -- because that’s who Louisiana is named after -- and why they speak French there. They see pictures of King Louis and start to get a feel and a flavor for that time period and what it was like to go for days over the ocean and see water all around until you come to land and suddenly discover a swamp.

They´ll also learn what the Creole lyrics mean. It's a fun story about a king that helps children personally connect to the song. With other stories they become very close to Dizzy Gillespie or Herbie Hancock or Mozart. I tell a story about Mozart as a little boy going to see the king and they imagine themselves in his place.

Q: How do you turn them on to jazz?

A: We tell a story about the kingdom of jazz with the Duke -- Duke Elington -- and the Princess -- Ella Fitzgerald -- that leads us into singing songs by Ellington, George Gershwin, etc. and learning to play some of them on the instruments. So we sing and play [the Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke classic] Salt Peanuts. Then we take a trip around the world, all the way from Duke's place down to Africa. By pretending that certain notes are characters or places, we use the stories to explain how to play a song.

Q: Do they naturally take to different genres or is it like trying to get a kid who only likes cereal and peanut butter to sample exotic cuisine?

A: There's a wide musical vocabulary that comes from listening to music from all over the world. When you think about the kind of music we grew up with for children here in the US, things like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, it’s all quarter notes. The melody is all major scale 4/4; it’s all a very straight-and-narrow set of vocabulary. You wouldn’t talk to kids with such a narrow vocabulary; you talk to them with the full vocabulary so they learn everything.

When they hear different sounds, whether jazz, blues, classical or African, Cuban, Brazilian, they get to explore and be transported beyond where they are physically and understand that the world is bigger than what they see. They learn about each culture and see how they can mix and cooperate together.

Q: The name of your band, Kelenia, translates to “love for other.”

A: Yes, exactly.

[Adult fans may want to check out his Kelenia album on the Motema label, which boasts a fusion of American jazz and Malian sounds with oniony Jewish accents. It took a 2010 Independent Music Award for best world-beat CD.]

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