A guitar is thumping. Percussion instruments are clicking. Words are flowing fast and furious. And twelve 70 and 80 year olds near Miami, Florida are nodding their heads and laughing along with the beats.
They’re attending a session on understanding rap music led by Jose Hurtado, a young musician who teaches for Mind & Melody, a Florida-based non-profit that teaches music lessons, primarily for seniors, to keep them cognitively, creatively and socially active.
By engaging with rap, participants understand Jose Hurtado better as a person. "Rap is his thing," says Lauren Koff, Mind & Melody’s co-founder and VP. And by sharing his beloved genre with seniors, Hurtado is giving the older generation tools to understand younger people.
For the seniors who participate, the interaction with younger generations seems to turn back time. One woman started off her music class by announcing to everyone, "I’m an old lady. I’m in my 60s." After some time with Mind & Melody, she changed to, "I’m an old lady. I’m in my 40s." Then, towards the end of the session, she was suddenly in her 20s. Intergenerational socialisation, it seems, was powerful enough to change the way she felt about herself.
But these are not just fun and joyous sessions in a handful of senior homes in South Florida. These music lessons do not just bring personal fulfillment, they tap into the human potential that is right in front of us every day as generations interact.
Too often, this human potential goes untapped. Heaps of learning can take place from one generation to another, but our lives and professional potential are left completely untapped because we live increasingly age-segregated lives. That should change. Because the truth is, we’re sitting on a goldmine. When generations begin to communicate and learn from each other, the results are astounding. Perceptions begin to change. Emotional intelligence blossoms. Knowledge gets preserved. In some cases, even profits even roll in.
SOURCE: Intergenerational Learning
