Is Ragazzi
irrelevant and old fashioned in today’s society? The money and the crowds are
going to songs by singers like Drake or Riahanna. Check out the words on the
top Billboard hits of the year and know this is what our young people are
hearing. There are certainly some great pop songs today, but there are many
with words full of violence and despair.
Boethius
(480-525 C.E.) wrote “Music was given us
either to purify or to degrade our conduct.” What does Ragazzi offer us in this
world?
Modern 21st
century culture has become the bastion of noise and chaos. On holidays, we are told to shop rather than
encouraged to enjoy our families and friend. When we go into stores, we are
often blasted with loud, pulsating music. When we go to the movies, we see violence, gun shots, blood flowing.
Does it matter what we allow in the minds of our young,
impressionable citizens? Mick LaSalle, the SF
Chronicle film critic, in a column January 2 2013 has refrained from
commenting on violence in movies in his reviews, thinking that it is too
subjective a subject. After the shooting in Aurora Colorado and Newtown
Connecticut, he questioned himself in his hesitation to comment on violence in
movies and he decided to speak up, recognizing the impact that our movies and
games have on our consciousness: “…let’s not fail to recognize that today,
violent media is the new regime. The
industry, in cinema and gaming…monstrously profitable, is a mechanical,
repetitive neural training ground for action…targets disenfranchised young men
and boys who are unformed and weak in personality.” He suggests that to
mitigate this effect that we create a rating system for violence that is at
least as powerful as that used for pornography in films and games. Then parents
can make an informed decision about what their children encounter.
Many crimes are committed by males feeling isolated.
While participation in sports involves
working in teams and creating community, a recent disturbing trend offers some
cautions to how our society is engaging in these sports. We have seen an uptick in fan violence at
sporting events and according to Jay Sterling Silver in the December 5 2012 SF Chronicle, we might be creating a
brutal atmosphere with the “fanatical
importance we attach to winning sports competitions…” “Indeed, many of our most popular spectator
sports are unabashed celebrations of violence….all this can breed a sense of
empowerment, entitlement and invulnerability on the part of the athlete..[who
is being pushed]…into what WE want.”
….”Why do we worship, reward and contort athletically gifted boys and
men ....at any cost?”
Ragazzi
helps young males express their feelings and form bonds with others. A recent year-long study conducted in the U.K. by
Tal-Chen Rabinowitch and Ian Cross, who are both on the music faculty at
Cambridge, found that children between 8 and 11 years old involved in different
types of group musical activities were more likely to develop empathy than those
in control groups where music was not included. “Empathy is considered
to be a precursor of prosocial behavior, a crucial ingredient in our daily
social lives, said Rabinowitch. “Empathy keeps us ‘together,’ connected, and
aware for each other.”…. “The Rabinowitch work helps reinforce the intuitive
notion that engagement in music is beneficial in terms of ethos, pathos, and
logos,” said Jonathan Berger, co-director of Stanford University’s Institute
for Creativity and the Arts. “The important notion here is that, in this age of
‘removed listening,’ in which the vast majority of engagement with music is
done through earbuds and on the run, the importance of true engagement is
critical.” (For complete article see: http://www.sfcv.org/article/is-music-the-new-social-media-empathy-entrainment) Singing in a chorus like Ragazzi is a positive social experience
increasing our capacity for understanding our feelings and the feelings of
others.
As we see a
growing sense of entitlement among members of our society, Ragazzi resists that
by rewarding boys for effort. Quoting Ruben Navarette Jr. in the SF Chronicle January 2 2013, “These days
it seems as if parents and teachers are more reluctant to reward good behavior
in children….in an era where building a child’s self-esteem is the ultimate
goal, we’ve become terrified of words like ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Are we producing a generation with a sense of
entitlement?” Certainly not in Ragazzi, we are not. We are helping to build
young men of character.
Ragazzi
teaches boys to study music beyond the four chords that make up most of popular
music. Ragazzi singers engage deeply
with the mysteries of composition, the building blocks of great pieces.
We sing classical songs, folk songs; we sing about love, and friends, and
sharing and loss and recovery and triumphant.
By singing with our friends music that is based on texts
which explore the human condition in all its phases, we are part of the
solution to a society of isolation and chaos. At the very least we are infusing
the brains of our young men with more positive images.
Leonard Bernstein said, “This will be our reply to
violence; to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than
ever before.” In response to the
Connecticut tragedy December 14, the December 15th opening to
Saturday Night Live was presented by children’s chorus singing a quiet “Silent
Night.” Music heals. Here is our mission for 2013, to work intensely and
beautifully and devotedly.
Ragazzi Boys Chorus is committed to excellence in
musical performance and education. The Ragazzi experience instills
self-confidence, cooperation, leadership, sensitivity and tenacity, helping our
boys develop into young men of character and distinction. Ragazzi serves
our boys and the community by performing a diverse selection of choral
works to the highest artistic standards.
