Why is music so misunderstood in our schools?

A friend of mine showed me a video last week and it really got me thinking. Why is music so misunderstood in our schools? In my opinion, it is because people see it as an "easy A" or the fact that they just don't realize the amount of time and effort that goes into being a musician. Music is the only "class" that demands perfection out of the students that are in it. Sometimes we may not reach that perfection, but it will be pretty close. When an audience finally hears a piece of music being played, in a concert, at a football game, a competition, a coffeehouse even, they hear the final product. Unfortunately, a majority of the people who hear this final product do not realize the amount of painstaking hours that have been put into the perfection that this piece demands. There are countless hours of full rehearsal time, even more hours of individual practice, thousands of dollars that are spent on private lessons, late nights of score analysis, and numerous times of asking yourself, "Why am I putting these kids through this horrible nightmare?" The rough part of it is, that is all in the first month.

Then it hit me. We do this because we love how music makes us feel. How it makes others feel. We create beautiful music because we live for the challenge that it throws at us each and every day.

Imagine this. You are a junior in high school and you play the trumpet. You are sitting in rehearsal and your director announces that you will be working on that dreaded piece. The one that you just can't seem to get right. There is nothing worse than sitting in rehearsal with a knot in your stomach thinking about the double tonguing in the beginning of Samuel Hazo's "Ride." You have been practicing this for weeks now. No matter what you try, you get tongue tied and all of the notes end up as one. You have talked about it with your private lesson teacher. He gave you a few exercises to work on your double tonguing. It has gotten better, but it's still not up to speed. You talk with your band director and tell her that you are worried about messing it up in the concert and making the section look bad during rehearsal. She tells you that everyone is having issues with it and not to sweat it. She tells you to keep trying and that she has faith in you to nail it.

The next day is a longer rehearsal. You are in the middle of "Shenandoah" and are sitting there sweating, worrying about what will happen when you get to "Ride."

That's it, it is time to play it. Here goes nothing. 1, 2, 3, breath, !!! Something clicked. You nailed it! All that work has paid off. All of those hours of rehearsal. All of those mornings dreading going to band because you knew you were going to have trouble. All of it has lead up to this moment. What makes it even sweeter is the fact that after you play it, you look up and you can see the glisten in your director's eyes because she know how hard this was for you. How much you struggled and how great of a feeling it must be right now because she was once in the same spot as you are now.

It is times like this that I want nothing more to be on the podium in a rehearsal. Not to conduct a band that will get everything absolutely perfect the first time, but to work with an ensemble. To see the growth of the individuals. To be there for that "Ah Hah!" moment.

I know I have thrown quite a few words out on this, but I think Jack Stamp sums it up pretty well when he explains why music matters.