In 2005, DCMS (the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) commissioned a campaign, ‘The Music Manifesto,’ with an agenda of revolutionising the teaching of music to the masses. Or, in Whitehall language, to act as a statement of common intent for a disparate range of educational, musical and funding establishments and to provide government, the private sector and the wider community with a focus for making contributions to youth music education. Earlier this year, the campaign leader, the exuberantly titled ‘Music Champion’ Marc Jaffrey, presented his second report to the government, announcing five targets for improving musical education for children across Britain. Around the same time, Oxford alumnus Howard Goodall was appointed Singing Ambassador for the Nation and was promised £10 million in extra funds to hit these targets over the next five years.
Goodall, who was first a chorister at New and then a music student at Christ Church, is most famous for his theme tunes to programmes such as Red Dwarf, Q.I. and Blackadder, and more recently he presented ‘How Music Works.’ In the wake of public interest through programmes like ‘The Choir’ and ‘The Singing Estate,’ set in Blackbird Leys, Goodall has been acclaimed as the Jamie Oliver of music.
Although Goodall’s first task of creating a national songbook for schools may whiff of the ‘command culture’ of Soviet Russia, it’s hard to argue with the Manifesto’s five key aims (see box). Indeed, it’s hard enough to even wring any sense out of them, beyond a well-meaning gloss of empty epithets. When Blair abused the Royal Prerogative, he mangled the Queen’s English as well. Increased access, diversity, excellence – stripped to its bare bones, the Music Manifesto is a lexical compost heap of verbiage that has become ubiquitous to any DCMS publication. But once we’ve got past the less than controversial proclamation that ‘every child matters,’ what does the manifesto really offer?
To meet the Manifesto’s aim of having every child sing ‘for the Olympics’ (is this some new event? Or a terrifying concept for the opening ceremony?), local councils and schools will have to make use of every penny of that extra £10 million. Teaching a single class let alone an entire school of youngsters, with varied musical backgrounds and abilities, to sing is no mean feat. Unlike in secondary schools, where the demands of the music curriculum necessitate competent and musically literate teachers, primary schools require no such specialists. In many cases, there may be no teacher who can confidently sing, provide piano accompaniment or even read music, and the costs and difficulty of training up or hiring professionals have been woefully underestimated.
Helpfully, the Manifesto has a convenient clause to allow for the dumbing down and corner-cutting which is bound to happen. This goal of ‘singing,’ to which all children must aspire, is met by the simple definition of ‘vocalisation’. Our next generation, then, is to be reared on a diet of primitive warblings every morning and an extra-curricular calendar of vowel sounds in the afternoon. Perhaps this is where Goodall’s handy national songbook of 30 songs will step in and provide a basic minimum of exposure to music without requiring extensive retraining for teachers.
Predictably, this debased musical ‘education’ is yet another example of an ignorance and rejection of all research into music psychology, and is patronising to the very core. Along with the myth of a universal ‘talent’, the blanket belief that all music is good for you is capable of poisoning any well-intentioned musical education plan. And come on; compulsory choir with a limited repertoire of 30 songs just might not engender a life-long love of music and certainly won’t provide adequate preparation for potential professionals. Is this measly level of education really worth the effort?
After all, it’s not as if children will somehow be left in musical poverty if the state doesn’t step in. Music is already part of every child’s upbringing, whether as iPod listener, guitar player, aspiring rapper or pop diva. But government agendas for music suggest that this is not the ‘right’ kind of music. whereas a ‘relevant’ and ‘diverse’ selection by a thinktank is.
Although it’s clear that Howard Goodall and those music teachers at the grassroots level who are behind the project are only concerned with promoting something they love and improving access to the benefits they believe music can bring, it’s just as clear that the government has quite a different agenda. The main focus of proposed benefits are framed in the jargon of other New Labour policies. Children are dubbed "the foundation of our internationally recognised creative economy and music industry" (Lord Adonis) and Arts funding is pushed, not as investing in innovation, but as investing in Industry. In general, the arts must keep in line with social inclusion, diversity, urban regeneration policy and contribute to economic growth to be deemed worthy of funding.
The Music Manifesto will not deliver on any of these levels, nor will it provide significant benefits to the individual. In distancing himself from the Jamie Oliver food analogy, Goodall stated "there is no Turkey Twizzler in the musical world – Pop is not like chips and crisps, and Mozart is not broccoli al dente", but if we are to have a national music education policy it must be more rigorous than this. For the government to be force-feeding children a prepackaged diet of factory-produced music in the interests of Industry is hardly healthy.
Cara Bleiman
