"France has never been a country musician [...] After all, what is the music in the French cultural landscape? so little. ... [....] In France, teaching music is a nightmare "
Thus begins the article by Telerama No. 3186, entitled The cacophony , Survey School music ... of Xavier Lacavalerie
As often, and as the school was my long time horizon, I try to appreciate the statement in light of my little experiment ...
I therefore question the representation I had as a teacher of a discipline called fundamental, of music education on the importance I attach to the role of my colleagues who taught, instead they insisted on me in the team of teachers ... and my own behavior towards them?
I recognize clearly that the scores they attributed the students did not mean much to me and had little in the crucial decisions of student orientation, I had to take as primary teacher .
I more interested in their assessment of student behavior, interest or not expressed in music and teaching, arrangements and even tastes manifested ...
short, he is certain to me that their discipline was the order of art (I would not like ... Telerama approval) of taste, pleasure ...
This probably explains when I teamed with my "colleagues of Music" was to carry out multidisciplinary projects which often leads to production rather than on cultural knowledge.
And if I remember two wonderful puppet projects, including our common students composed the songs that one of them in particular sang solo in a voice so pure and clear, that still seems to feel the pleasure and emotion, and later a 98 Ulysses, or a story loosely adapted singing of the fowler , history, music and musing with percussion. ... It is quite a recognize that these projects were less likely than my collaborations with teachers to design or body language that were more frequent, taking the form of projects and more modest achievements, but showed a more real unity of purpose, reflection , cultural sights.
At bottom, perhaps more than any other discipline, it was a matter of personal affinity, cultural and educational music with colleagues. I did not always what they taught music, or even the music they taught.
course no question in our national education, hours and miserly ways, teach the practice of an instrument, but some colleagues were singing the children and sometimes remarkably so, and I enjoyed it ... others were doing their " hear the music. "
But sometimes we spent more time to recognize the instruments, or illustrate by poor sound samples of technical knowledge (which I do not own), that listening to long passages of real music. Play to listen, or to express a feeling, a personal opinion, what I want ... For this is in addition to other teaching practices more academic course, but probably unavoidable, I wanted to teach literature, and reading of works ....
In fact I thought we did not listen to enough music ...
At school! For
yet our children, music, their music, look at them, headphones ears, key MP3, Smartphone soon, they listen !!
Maybe we have not had the audacity to simply let them listen to ours, or they can discover the history of music
confess, girl of 68, failing many sought to impose mine to my daughter, rather anxious to hear his, thinking that it would determine itself and find out.
While in literature, through the bond program, the authority of the school and college, I had the duty, happiness, and try to transmit a kind tradition ....
So it's the fault of the school, if France is not a country musician, because we have failed to teach music to our children? ... And then the musicians, will always be children of musicians, those who grew up in music, on which their family has put pressure on them to play the accordion instead of going whoring cycling, while we we put the pressure to do homework instead of going to play in the street, or can not we put no pressure at all??
blame the school but not that ...
We must also say that sometimes when we go to a concert, or listen to a small group that we know, or we have heard, we are affected by the absence of public or worse, failure to listen, indifference or lack of heat. Or the little ones who are restless and on the floor in front of the stage ...
We think so: difficult, the artist's life, full of uncertainties and determination to be heard. Sometimes we doubt our taste, we say, yet it was beautiful that way, right? interestingly, This instrumental composition, amazing what tuba, I had discovered .. The bass sound. ... The third song was melodic and moving. ...?
Sometimes, it's noise, (for us!) Dirty dirty dirty (for us), the sound to the ears ... and there it is we who do not succeed ...
But to know
must go, must try, must look, to listen. ... And then there are the chapels, the ostracism, the purisms that prevent going to hear the other side of the wall of our backyard music ... unusual that we could displease ..
Poem Miss Justyne Nayam "which resembles" a picture of my New Yorker. (Text and Translation (French-English) of Justyne Nayam. You can discover his world on his MySpace page ). 
