Pre-natal playlist: does your baby actually enjoy music?
Maybe it was because I was destined to be a music journalist, but even at the age of three, I knew that Blink-182 were shit. No matter how much romanticised Western media was rammed down my throat as a child, I couldn’t get on board with this obscurely emotional brand of American pop-punk.
It seemed like a disdain that was embedded in my brain from an early age, long before I listened to music as a source of analysis or cultural understanding. But there’s clearly a substantial reason as to why. My infantile existence, all the way to my adolescence, endured the sort of dedicated soundtrack that acted as an antithesis to that one specific American era.
No, whenever music was played in my house, it was fleeting but always diverse. Norah Jones could quite easily be followed by Rod Stewart, who thankfully would give way to the sounds of Earth, Wind and Fire. It was unpredictable, varied, but never quite as irritating as the sound of Tom DeLonge.
But the man who I synonymise so closely with my childhood is Stevie Wonder. The sound of his voice rings as clearly as my mother’s, calling me in from the park to have my tea, and it is he who I always come back to when I need a jolting reminder of my love for music. He is undoubtedly one of the greats and his rich tapestry of creative storytelling clearly built a foundation of musical understanding that now over two decades on, has impacted my day to day profession.
So it must all come back to this simple idea, that babies and children react strongly to music? While I would have loved to have been played Mozart during my prenatal phase to supposedly make me a genius, clearly, playing Wonder’s discography back to back had a profound, albeit unknown, effect on me at the time.
So, does your baby genuinely like music?
Well, Dr Laurel Trainor, an expert on musical development in children and adults, they do, even from their prenatal phase. It’s the most primal and sensory experience they can engage with before developing their own sense of expression.
“From their earliest days, infants are trying to engage actively in music,” explained Trainor. “As soon as they can start making responses, they do. Certainly towards the end of the first year, you can see overt signs that they are trying to engage in the music by singing along, clapping, and moving their bodies.”
It’s not just an enjoyment source either, it does, in fact, develop their temperament in a beneficial way. The doctor continued to explain that, “The infants in active engagement music classes show superior early language learning,” she says. “They’re socially more advanced, easier to soothe, and smile more than children [who are] just exposed to passive music listening.”
As a music journalist, who clearly finds the subtle effects of music deeply profound and life changing, I find none of this surprising. However, I am comforted by Dr Trainor’s debunking of the myth that playing your prenatal baby classic music turns them into a genius, explaining “Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for this.”
