Lucy Green and Chengdu Dry Fish

"Nothing is more depressing than eating alone."
An orchestra colleague


Imagine that you are about to eat in a Chinese restaurant.  The dish is Chengdu Hot Dry Fish.  It is stir-fried fish marinated in Shaoxing wine and flavored, among many other spices, by Chinese chili sauce and Szechuan peppercorns which numb your tongue.  It sounds delicious. Unless, of course, you hate hot and spicy, or people at the next table are having too much fun and ruin your quiet family dinner (well, it would never happen in my family!) or the restrooms are so unattractive that you wish that you would never had to know.  On the other hand, what if you had a great time and did not have to go anywhere, your own child did not throw a meatball that ended on someone's plate ten feet away that caused you great shame, the food was just right but the waiter was rude?  The dynamics of dining out may get even more complex but only when everything comes together in the most undisturbed way, are you going to have a celebratory culinary experience!

Let's speak for a moment about a book by Lucy Green, " Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy" (2008).  The book discusses various aspects of  Music Education and suggests synthesizing both formal and informal approaches in school music programs in order to invoke, sustain and develop our students' lifelong active involvement in music.  Whereas formal interaction with music often is associated with  prescriptive "do as I do" and  "because I did it when I was your age," the informal exposure to music brings the sensation of freedom into the process.   The students are autonomous in making choices about what kind of music they like listening to, what is worth imitating, what instrument to play so they can match up with their musical goal,  and who would they like to play with.  The students engage themselves in listening, performing, composing, and improvising with no or minimal guidance and become music-makers of their own musical taste.

As commonly said: "Music is food for the soul."  Indeed, I find numerous analogies in forming our musical and culinary habits. First of all, both are products of social, psychological and economic environments (http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Pre-Sma/School-Aged-Children-Diet-of.html).   According to the "School Cafeteria: A Culture for Promoting Child Nutrition Education" (1997) by Neill, Dinero and Allensworth, children's eating patterns are established at a young age by their parents and families, whereas in school, students' diets are determined by peer pressure, teacher involvement and the food choices and quality, similarly to L. Green's analysis of the state of Music Education.  Just as when it comes to favorite foods: pizza, mac & cheese, burgers, chips, soda and ice-cream fueled by the world of advertisement, students' musical interests also usually are situated in the realm of popular music.  Furthermore, the accessibility of "convenience foods" cuts down on the traditional "eating at the table" custom, contributing instead to a "grab and eat" attitude among younger generations comparable to the development of a commercial consumption bias in students' musical taste.  Moreover, while in my opinion, children's (and teachers') informal exposure to world cuisine (Chinese, Moroccan, Polish,  French, etc.) is liberating in a sense that young people learn about each others culture, social behavior and traditions, the introduction to world music and a variety of musical styles  is equally mind-opening. 

One of L. Green's backbone postulates of learning music in school is a notion of inter-sonic or inherent and delineated musical meanings.  The inter-sonic meaning represents our perception of intrinsic musical qualities, for example, style.  The delineated meaning is a result of non-music associations (or what I called "spacing out") caused by listening or music-making.  Our reaction to music, therefore, may range on the spectrum from, e.g., "celebratory" to "alienated", and depends on the quality of our experience.  Likewise, inherent culinary meaning, for instance, taste, and delineated culinary meaning such as a social aspect of eating, will result in forming  similar attitudes towards food.

So, let us learn and teach how to turn our music-food-making into a joyous experience!