Page 2 - Fantasy Book 2

Foreword for the Fantasies on Indonesian children & folksongs

Indonesia had a great gure and expert on education, called Suwardi Suryaningrat, or more known as Ki
Hajar Dewantara. He had a method of teaching knowledge through singing, a method called Sari Suara.
This method was formulated with Maria Montessori when he lived in Europe in the 1920s.

Music is an important component for all people to posses in their lives. A child should be introduced to
music at a very young age. The introduction of every type of music from our own traditional songs,
classical, all the way to modern jazz is important. This gives a child the ability to form their own opinion
to what they might like the best. Classical music can teach a child every aspect of music including
melody, harmony, dynamics, even polymeters, and polyrhythms. These are the components that are
scarce in modern pop music today which is so popular among children.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a remarkable composer that all children should study. The piece,
Variations on "Ah, Vous Dirai-je, Maman" is perfect for a child in that it resembles a well known nursery
rhyme, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". This begins as a simple melody transforming into a complex variation
containing a di erence in meter throughout the variations with an increase in tempo. The composition
has a very light and cheerful familiar sound to it and could easily attract the attention of a child.

Using songs in the classroom is a very easy tool to motivate small children. It works as an ice-breaker
against the routine. Singing should be an essential part of teaching, because it makes the students feel
more receptive to the language and more alert with the things around them: the animals such as cicak
(house lizard), burung kutilang (nightingale) etc.
No doubt, songs are a good way to teach for they incorporate all the language learning skills:
1- Listening (to songs)
2- Speaking (singing songs)
3- Reading (following the lyrics)
4- Writing ( lling in the blanks)
With the action of singing and involving movement, the children will feel more con ndent of begining to
chant or sing as their fear fade away and later on they will be practicing the catchy lyrics over and over.
Chanting and singing also familiarizes the students with the rhythm and intonation of the correct gram-
mar of their language. So, it is not easy to write good children songs.

When I was small, Indonesia had great songwriters as educators. AT Mahmud, Ibu Soed, Bapak & Ibu
Kasur, and even the children folksongs are so exquisitely attractive for children, such as "Baju Weutuh"
from West Java.

Now that Indonesian young pianists are clearly superior in technical capabilities than those in Europe, I
felt the urge to give them piano pieces that deal with children songs from that era, back in the 1970s. My
hope is that they would look at the original songs (now that there is youtube and other means to do it),
learn it again and learn the lyrics too, since nowadays there are not many good Indonesian children
songs being made. Indonesian children now sing American teen-idol songs, which is good for their
English, but hey, we are Indonesian, right?