Media Review: Songs in Their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children's Lives

Abstract

Campbell, Patricia Shehan. Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. xvi + 307 pp. Paperback: ISBN 978-0-195-38252-5, $24.95. Hardback: ISBN: 978-0-195-38251-8, $99.00. One afternoon, a colleague visiting from Australia commented that she would in the books in my office while I did an errand. Fossick! I looked it up. To fossick is rummage or search around, especially for a possible profit, as in prospecting for gold (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fossick). Figuratively, as my colleague used it, to fossick is to mine the books. I've done the same thing. this new era of iPads, Nooks, Kindles, and e-readers that allow a single human to carry hundreds of books as easily as the daily mail, the shelves of bookstores and libraries and (particularly) colleagues' offices still intrigue me as places to mine for intellectual gold. What are they reading? Who are they reading? Why? Which books connect to which ideas? What new thinking fascinates them? While I may not be able to judge a book by its cover, I can often tell something about it by the condition of the spine. Well-loved books, or at least often-used ones, show wear. A book on my shelf that shows a great deal of wear is the first edition of Patricia Shehan Campbell's Songs in Their Heads: Music and Its Meaning in Children's Lives (1998). The silvery letters on the red-orange cloth cover are no longer shiny. The jacket, if there ever was one, is long gone, and the cloth corners of the hardcover are worn through in places. The binding has small tears at each end of the spine, and the glue is loose. The book falls open and stays open easily. It's seen a bit of use. Some of the wear can be attributed to my own work, and some to the hands of dozens students who have borrowed and returned it time and again, before often ordering their own copy. Songs in Their Heads has had a substantial impact and it continues to have broad reach. Since its publication, the first edition of Songs in Their Heads has been cited hundreds of times in music education journals, texts, and dissertations, as well as in music psychology, ethnomusicology, community music, and even music theory publications. Scholars writing for arts policy journals, folklore publications, general education and early childhood research journals, curriculum studies publications, and even medical journals have cited Campbell's book, and the Google Scholar citation index for Songs in Their Heads includes entries in several different languages. The second edition should be of similar interest to multiple constituencies and has also been cited numerous times. Still, why get the second edition of Songs in Their Heads, and why read it? First, Campbell has updated the book with new information drawn from music education and ethnomusicology, sociology and cultural studies, science and medicine, and education and psychology. Particularly intriguing are the sources related to media and popular culture, which are two of the ways Campbell broadens her introductory chapter argument for serious and focused study of children and their unique and particular cultures. this short chapter, she cites new literature in her review of the multifaceted and multidisciplinary history of child study and weaves new methodological sources into her description of the process behind both the first and second editions. Following the introductory chapter, she introduces the heart of the book, which comprises three parts. The first of the three main parts, titled In Music: Children at Musical Play, includes eight narrative (17) of children doing just that--playing, learning, doing music both consciously and unconsciously as part of the natural unfolding of their lives at home, at school, in a toy store, with their friends, and with their families. After a brief section in which Campbell describes her research process, the eight tales appear as a series of short ethnographies of children's musical cultures. …