The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson

Author:Tom Hodgkinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

So, how to bring music and dancing back into our lives and the lives of our children? As far as music goes, I have started to teach the ukulele at our local primary school. The uke is an ideal starter instrument for children because it is small and easy to play. Most children can learn “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and the chord of C in about half an hour. So you get good results quickly, unlike, say, with the violin. Having to teach the children also motivates me to practice and to think about the instrument. The other great things about the uke are that any number of kids can play it at the same time and, unlike the dreaded recorder, it leaves the mouth free for singing. It is also cheap: good ones can be bought for $35.

The ukulele is by nature cheerful. It was born when Portuguese immigrants to Hawaii in the late nineteenth century jumped off the boat playing small Portuguese guitars. The Hawaiians adapted these instruments and soon the whole island was playing them, including the Hawaiian royal family. Therefore they embody a sort of joyful Hawaiian spirit.

The ukulele encourages a rhythmic sort of playing style, which means you can get people dancing without the need for drums. At a recent wedding I attended, the PA briefly malfunctioned and the music stopped. To fill the gap I strummed a few chords on the uke, and everyone continued dancing.

Music can also happen spontaneously. Yesterday I was conducting an all-day leave-them-alone educational experiment, which consisted of my lying on the sofa, dozing and reading, while the children busied themselves around me. Henry played with a tractor and trailer; Delilah talked to herself in a delightful sing-song voice. Arthur, who is generally the telly- and computer-addicted one, played with the pots and pans all day. First he put a colander on his head and sat on a pile of pots, saying: “I am the pots-and-pans king.” Later he arranged the pots in another heap and banged them in turn with a wooden spoon. “I’ve made a musical instrument.” However, Arthur seems terribly inhibited when it comes to dancing. I don’t know why. Maybe he has already lost the wild and uninhibited nature of small children.

You could go even further and remove them from any kind of formal music and give them more exposure to the music of nature. This is the line taken by Masanobu Fukuoka, that great Japanese natural farmer I mentioned earlier.

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