Old Fart

 

I am officially an old fart—the music teacher who isn’t “cool” because she doesn’t listen to today’s popular music and won’t play all of said music for her students to hear.

 

For some reason, I want my students to understand form. I want them to understand that most songs have a pattern and that the pattern is fairly predictable in the music that we hear on the radio—or YouTube, or Spotify, or AmazonMusic, or our playlists, or wherever else we listen to music. I want them to understand that most songs have verses and a chorus (refrain) and that the chorus is the part of the song that we end up singing along with first because the chorus repeats itself over and over again. I point this out in almost all of the music that we listen to, and I hope that by the time they leave 5^th grade, my students have figured it out.

 

So…we test out their knowledge with their favorites. I ask them what their favorite songs are. I vet them. Then we listen to them…unless they are not school appropriate…which…some of them, I believe, aren’t appropriate for anyone—anywhere.

 

Explicit cursing every other word, guns, violence, drugs, alcohol, graphic (sometimes non-consensual) sex acts…I struggle with some of the things that pass for music these days…and I mourn the fact that our children are listening to them. Even if they just like “the beat.” Even if they don’t understand what they are hearing. The music that they listen to is planting itself in their subconscious and will be with them for the rest of their lives. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want songs about a girl not wearing underwear so that a boy has easy access stuck in my head for the rest of my life. [And that thought is fairly clean in comparison to some.]

 

I am an old fart. The music teacher who isn’t “cool” because she doesn’t listen to today’s popular music and won’t play all of said music for her students to hear.

 

Oh God. I have no words to pray. No suggestions. No solutions. Just this lament from an old fart’s heart. Somehow. Some way. Change. Redemption. Protection for our children’s hearts, minds, and souls. Please. Amen.