As a teacher who travels around to dozens of schools and meets hundreds of students each year, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. Over the past several years the number of clarinet players is increasing rapidly at the junior high and elementary school level, along with their seeming enthusiasm to learn the instrument. What could possibly be inspiring kids to pick up a clarinet in an age where the Apple iPad is the number one must-have gift for children? None other than what made the saxophone the most popular instrument of the 1990s: television.
What could possibly be inspiring kids to pick up a clarinet in an age where the Apple iPad is the number one must-have gift for children?
Most everyone can recall the incredibly successful comedy series, The Simpsons, which prominently featured Lisa playing her saxophone throughout. This inadvertantly led to the saxophone being the first instrument that came to mind when students were selecting an instrument for their school band program.
In fact, I distinctly remember wanting to choose saxophone if only for reasons of familiarity when I was 13, along with about 80% of my classmates. But our band teacher, like most others at the time, found this problematic. This is because forming a proper band requires a good balance of the different instruments to get a good sound. The solution was to adopt a policy that prevented students from playing sax in their first year, unless they had previous experience or had purchased their own instrument. This did a great job of weeding out the kids who really wanted to play, as they switched the following year, from the kids who were just as happy playing something else.
Fast forward to today. The hype of The Simpsons has long passed, but there’s another TV show on the block marketing a specific band instrument to school-age children: Spongebob Squarepants, which features a character named Squidward who plays the clarinet. The series has been popular with kids for over ten years, and continues to grow in popularity, but discovering this didn’t come easy for me.
Squidward’s amateur approach makes the clarinet seem fun and approachable to kids.
Unlike The Simpsons, which is nearly ubiquitous in all age groups, I had never encountered Spongebob due to its “kids-only” nature. In fact, when kids began telling me that “Squidward” had inspired them to play, I had no choice but to consult Google on the matter, as I had no idea who–or what–they were talking about. I was astonished by what I found.
Instead of a prodigious clarinettist that possessed Benny Goodman-like virtuosity and showmanship, or a focused modern orchestral tone and technique, Squidward was neither. In fact, he was a cartoon character who could barely make a sound on his clarinet, and did little but squeak. The show unabashedly makes fun of this, and goes so far as to accuse Squidward of sounding like a “dying animal” while he practices.
At first I was horrified. With all the wonderful musical talent out there, how can this parody of the clarinet be good for its reputation?!
But I was wrong; kids love it. And the more kids I asked, the more I discovered that they could relate in a positive way to Squidward’s influence on their playing. I began to realize that, contrary to my fears, Squidward’s amateur approach makes the clarinet seem fun and approachable to kids.
As a teacher, the most interesting part of all this was also the most unexpected. Kids are usually horrified and frustrated when they try to learn clarinet because, in all honestly, it does squeak and squawk like a dying chicken at first. But now kids laugh, make a joke about Squidward, and then try again. Kids who fall behind in class find solace in the fact that “at least they can play better than Squidward,” which gives them a positive attitude and the incentive to keep on trying.
I’ll leave the last word to Squidward “performing” in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Enjoy!
Sean.
PS: Is it just me, or does Squidward seem to be practicing his Beethoven 3 excerpt in the clip above? Haha.
