Stick Time: Musical Dangers of a Doritos® Diet

Yes, they’re delightfully crunchy, addictively tasty, and munched by Americans in unimaginable amounts (one processing plant in Georgia produces 250 million pounds each year).  But they are also about as nutritious as a piece of cardboard.  No responsible parent would serve snack chips as the mainstay of their child’s diet.

 

Shouldn’t the same standard apply to the musical diet we music educators feed the young singers in our care?

 

There are a lot of pieces music available that are trendy, tasty and fun.  But while a choral setting of a Justin Bieber tune may make some young singers swoon, it is as musically nutritious as the aforementioned Dorito®.  It comes down to a question of priorities: keeping our students entertained versus keeping them musically well-fed.

 

Here, then, a performance from a recent ACDA national conference of a children’s choir.  Our colleague made a conscious decision to provide those young singers with a nourishing artistic experience, and the resulting performance speaks volumes about the choir’s musical diet.  While you listen to this selection, open your own folder.  How much of the music being served this semester is nutritious and how much is the musical equivalent of a snack chip?