Learning & Development: Music - With a bang!

For thousands of years humans have used percussion to make music and communicate, and its appeal is undiminshed. While we now have the technology to make sophisticated instruments, it is still the basic forms of percussion that excite us most.

On YouTube, you can find examples of street percussion from around the world; Rowan Atkinson playing an invisible drum kit; pencil tappers; spoon players; body percussionists; a teenager playing a cardboard box. What is exciting about these clips are the marvellous sounds being produced with so little. Young children are also experiencing some great percussion.

Lucy Jenkins, foundation class teacher at Foxdell Infants in Luton, has spent the past year introducing junk to her class for them to bang, crash and make music with. Having always worked with young children, and having young children of her own, she knows the benefits that can be gained from banging an old saucepan with a wooden spoon. At its simplest level, it's the pure pleasure of expressing oneself through sound. When two children start to make banging noises, then it's no exaggeration to say that this is a form of communication.