Music Matters

Some of the best things I discover pop up when I'm procrastinating about some assignment or piece of work that I'm working (or not) on. Yesterday, while browsing the internet I came across a really interesting site. Little Kids Rock, www.littlekidsrock.org - it 'wow'-ed me! Here is an organization - in the U.S. - that is working to bring music lessons and free instruments to public schools in the United States. Wow!!!!

Of course I immediately began thinking about schools here and what can be done to make it happen here too. I know that one of Indonesia's jazz assets - whom I am proud to now call my friend - Jilly Likumahuwa, brings music and singing into some schools in Jakarta. I need to talk to her on how this can be done on a more regular and wider scale.

Music is something of great passion to me. Since I was 2 years old, my parents taught me how to handle a record player - and yes, those old vinyl records, too! "Make sure you don't touch the vinyl part," Ibu and Bapak would say. How I managed to do it with little 2-year old hands, I don't know. What I do know is that I have had music in my life for as long as I can remember.

By the age of four, I already had my VERY OWN children's record player. Ooooh how proud I was of it! I can actually still remember what it looked like. It was a red and white and yellow Fisher-Price record player. I actually found pictures of it on e-Bay. It's referred to a Vintage 1971 Fisher-Price record player...oh my GOSH!!!

In preparing for today's lesson on Multiple Intelligences - we're currently running a training on Women's Community Leadership - I decided to take one of the online tests available on the internet. Lo and behold, guess what my strongest intelligence is! Surprise, surprise!

So now I have a new Passion...bringing music...more than just the paduan suara and singing songs that we got in school - though I loved the classes I had with Pak Par (then a violinist of the RRI Orchestra), because he taught us different arrangements with difficult but beautiful harmonies.

Who wants to join in this passion?!