One of the most significant ways in which culture has been transmitted, especially with children, is through music. Do you remember those schoolyard chants or the lullabies mommy used to sing?

"Cry cry baby, walala dumplin, take of yuh shoes ..." or

"Hush little baby don't say a word, momma's gonna buy you a ..."

If you remembered the chant ending was "and run up de mountain" or the ending for the lullaby was "mocking bird" then awesome! Did those bring back any childhood memories? It's been so many years but somehow the music of our childhood is still etched in our brain. We sang that "cry cry baby" song when we knew someone was going to get in trouble right! It was a way to express our emotions in a song chant. Not many children nowadays may have ever even heard it before.

Despite our rich and diverse cultural heritage in Trinidad and Tobago, many young children end up being very limited musically, unaware of the plethora of music out there and may only get introduced to folk music or other genres if their music teacher includes it in the classroom/ in their private lessons or if parents have a wide-ranging listening repertoire.

Whenever I would get a new music class for the term in Secondary school, I'd do a listening assessment on the first day where I'd play a excerpts of different genres of local, Caribbean and "popular" music from all over globe for the students. Sure they knew what Soca, Chutney, Rock and Reggae sounded like but in most cases they couldn't even identify Calypso, Parang, Jazz and R&B, well they called it "slows". Then we'd continue into discussing the different genres and their origins.

At Alabanza Music we strive to expose all of our students to a variety of music from different cultures and from different eras and we believe students should be acquainted with our local Folk, Calypso, Soca, Chutney and Parang music culture.

In our Musikgarten Early Childhood Music Classes, we seek to revive those folk traditions that we and our parents grew up on. Ok aren't you a little wary of some of the redundant music of the YouTube sensations? Why not shift things up by singing to your children and singing with your children, not just in class but at home. We'll give you the material to help you and your child experience music that has been passed on from one generation to the next.

In this video, Roger H. Brown, President of Berklee College of Music, discusses the importance of music as a form of communication throughout history for families, groups and civilizations, and ties this to the ways in which music is central to the social and mental development of very young children.