A soundtrack for life

Tetyana Denford - 29 Mar 16

I was running the other day, and I had my iPhone strapped to me, earbuds firmly squished into my ears, and my playlist was blasting loudly, keeping my feet moving (even though they really didn’t want to).

I looked down at one point and realised that I was reliving my BC years (Before Child) through music. My playlist consisted of, but was not limited to, Journey, Britney Spears, Prodigy, Lenny Kravitz and Eminem. P!nk and Beyonce were also on there, of course. It made me smile because I realised how important music is to us, and how we’ve infused our kids’ lives with it as soon as they popped out onto this planet (all three were born to specific, and very different, songs).

My husband and I both love music (his may be slightly more refined than mine, I’ll be honest). It constantly plays in the house, in the car. We still try and go to gigs. When I was pregnant with our first baby, we saw Foo Fighters at Wembley, Blur at Hyde Park, Athlete out at a farm festival… me with my arms in the air, eyes closed, bouncing around with my giant beach-ball belly. On the weekends, he plays guitar for the kids before bedtime, I tend to sing show tunes when I’m making dinner (complete with choreography, which can be weird, I admit).

Now, although that works for us, I know lots of people who view music differently once they have kids, and I find all of their reasons fascinating. For example.. one mum friend of mine doesn’t want to listen to anything other than classical and opera, because she believes that it enhances her children’s cognitive development. Another friend of mine only listens to Disney songs when her kids are around (how she hasn’t stuck forks into her ears after another 30 minutes of the “Frozen” soundtrack, full blast, in the car, I have no idea. That’s commitment right there.). A different friend of mine wants to give her children a very progressive start in life, so she plays Jefferson Airplane and Bob Dylan, and talks to them about how “groovy” the 60s were and how women need to learn to ‘rescue’ their men and not the other way around.

I’m pretty eclectic, to be honest. I grew up listening to country music and Paul Simon, then discovered Alanis, Nirvana and 10,000 Maniacs at Uni (the standard list for most 90’s girls trying to ‘find their cool’), and then broadened my horizons in New York by discovering Jeff Buckley, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Radiohead, Imogen Heap and Foo Fighters. And I’m realising more and more that I’ve passed that kind of genre-indecisiveness to my kids.

It never occurred to me, once I started having children, to adjust my musical tastes. In fact, I think it somehow made me focus on it more: the enjoyment of it, the magic of lyrics and notes coming together to create an indescribable feeling. It became vital. Up until a few months ago, I had never owned a soundtrack to any children’s movie. It wasn’t a calculated thing, it was just not something I thought about. We would listen to (still do) Dandy Warhols, T-Rex, Muse, Metallica (my husband’s proudest moment so far was when our eldest, at 4, said ‘Tato… would you sing the Lullabye Song like Metallica please?’), Plan B, Florence & The Machine and Maximo Park. Our kids know the lyrics to “Let It Go” just as well as they know “Madness”, by Muse. It’s a pretty broad spectrum.

I think music can connect you to a place, a person, a feeling, a situation. I think it can pick you up, make you cry, inspire you, make you question the world and your place in it. For children, I think it provides a really interesting education. They can take music with them anywhere, and revisit a specific feeling that they love (or hate). Music can relax them, or give them a burst of energy to let themselves act crazy. It can also teach them new words (ideally, not ones favoured by Eminem), new ways of saying things and using fun phrases, and can exercise their little voices and make them BIG voices (in every sense of the word).

Above all, music is predominantly a happy sound to hear in a world where there is anger and frustration and sadness. Music can be a sort of lifeline and connection to a magic place where all you need is a loud voice, an unquenchable spirit and the belief that you can always dance like no one is watching.

Tetyana Denford

Tetyana is a Ukrainian-American mum of three, married to an Englishman, living in NY. She's written for Elle and Vogue magazines, and her first novel 'Motherland' is available at Amazon. She hosts a YouTube show called The Craft and Business of Books, translates for Frontline PBS news, and writes freelance.

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