School notes

Delhi-based musicians Shubhendra and Saskia Rao are all set to take music education to every child.

August 07, 2014 06:36 pm | Updated 06:36 pm IST

Sitar exponent Shubhendra Rao, disciple of late Pandit Ravi Shankar, and his wife, Hindustani cellist Saskia Rao-De Haas.

Sitar exponent Shubhendra Rao, disciple of late Pandit Ravi Shankar, and his wife, Hindustani cellist Saskia Rao-De Haas.

Sitar exponent Shubhendra Rao, disciple of late Pandit Ravi Shankar, and his wife, Hindustani cellist Saskia Rao-De Haas — a disciple of Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia — have decided to put their diverse backgrounds together for the cause of India’s children.

“Music is of course very close to our hearts and its uplifting and everything,” says Saskia, “but we feel it should play a bigger role.” She points out that music can contribute significantly in the development of a child, and studies in neuroscience and psychology have shown this.

For Indian schools, they strongly advocate a curriculum-based music education approach, says Shubhendra. Saskia adds, “We have developed glocalised music education. It teaches Indian music but with the use of western and other methodology that has been developed over many years.”

Music education has been used in other countries to provide children with benefits beyond the seven swaras. By way of example, Saskia talks of children in countries of South America who belong to lesser privileged strata of society. “They get music in the classroom and a general formation in music and then they learn how to play music together and sing together. And these children, their whole life changes, it is an amazing system,” she says.

For Indian schoolchildren, who normally are offered popular, light or film songs in the name of music but not much classical music, Saskia adds that Indian classical music has great scope to affect lives positively. “We would love to have classical music playing a better role in their life.”

With Saskia’s training in Western classical as well as Hindustani music, and Shubhendra’s training in the guru-shishya parampara, the two hope to combine the best of these two approaches to “revolutionise” music education in the country.

“Music is the first language any child is exposed to. Every mother sings to a child even while it is in the womb. The first smile you get from a baby is in response to sound,” says Shubhendra. “And music is all about sound.”

Listening is a major component of learning. The mother’s voice and other sounds are among the first elements of an infant’s education. “Somehow, we tend to lose that aspect because school teaches only A-B-C. Why don’t we teach Sa-Re-Ga-Ma at that stage,” asks Shubhendra. This purely academic approach denies students the opportunity to build faculties of the brain that music can provide, he feels. “For example, there is rhythm in everything we do, in our heartbeat, the way we talk…”

There is also the aspect of learning languages, says Saskia. “For children exposed to music, their language acquisition skills and way of imitating and learning in general is much improved. The research is in.”

Music education, and not just for the elite, is the need of the hour, feels the couple.

The chance to learn music is often seen as depending on talent, says Saskia. This is a disease. So many children are told you can’t sing.” However, only a small percentage of people actually cannot sing, she emphasises. And even if they are not talented in the conventional way, “they deserve a chance,” says Shubhendra. “And music is not just raga or tala. It should be fun, like throwing a ball.”

Besides, remarks Saskia, when a child is not excellent at maths, would a teacher say, “You should not learn maths,” and if the child is not good at reading, would the teacher say, “Don’t learn the A-B-C”?

“To create a better society tomorrow we need a wholesome education, and how do you do that without addressing the finer sensibilities,” asks Shubhendra.

(The launch of the Shubhendra & Saskia Rao Foundation will be followed by the screening of “Joys of Freedom”, a film based on music composed by the Raos. August 13, India International Centre, 40, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi, 6 p.m.)

Child-centric

Saskia and Shubhendra have been developing a curriculum for music education from the nursery level to high school. Though the thought has been with them for years, they have intensified efforts to crystallise the syllabus over the last eight months. They also feel that at the pre-primary stages, specialised music teachers need not be recruited and offer a training syllabus for teachers already in the system, “to become music ambassadors.”

For the past month, they have been teaching about 120 children from the Nizamuddin Basti as part of the Hope project.

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