From Mary-Anne Olmsted-Kohls
Hutchinson

In your Extra! feature article about the young rock group, Last Man Standing, your staff writer was looking for reasons why these boys would be so musical at such a young age. She naturally sought to ask about their heritage, falling into the same myth as most that musical talent is inherited. However, the true fact is — all children are born musical and that it’s at birth that this propensity is at its peek.

I know, skeptics out there are saying, “Sure a baby playing a musical instrument or singing? Yeah, right!” No. That comes from musical training. All babies in the beginning are wired to be very sensitive to sound — they need to be to recognize their mother’s voice. Also, their eyes aren’t yet developed so their other senses like hearing and touch are more advanced.

Parents who play music — especially classical — sing and play rhythm games such as chants and finger plays will nurture the musical ability that is already within their child. If these are continued through the preschool years, the child will be a highly intuitively musical child. After the preschool years, musical aptitude becomes musical knowledge. This is when people start labeling “talent” because the child who has been nurtured in the early years will now be considered “talented” while children raised in less musical environments will not be as recognized.

So, it is not the genes of these boys that have blessed them with musical ability. It would be the musical environments their parents created while they were young and the early music training encouraged that would have. The early training was mentioned, but what happened prior to that is what really should have been delved into if wanting to know where their “talent” came from.

Editor’s note: Mary-Anne Olmsted-Kohls is a private music instructor who has been specializing in preschool music since 1988. She says all information given in the second paragraph is documented research that has become general knowledge in the music education field.