Laila Barkefors:

Music as life quality - Knut Brodin 100 Years

This article focuses on Knut Brodin (1989-1986), anti-authoritarian composer of children's songs and in his days a controversial music teacher who used popular songs and jazz in his music teaching. In Olofskolan in Stockholm Brodin acquired practical knowledge as a music teacher a decade, from 1932 till 1941. After a brief overview of Brodin's diversified career as a musician, of articles about him, and a short description of Olofskolan, an activity and reform school existing during the period 1927-1941, I look into Brodin's approach to music education. In articles by and about him and in his accounts in annual reports of Olofskolan I find two main lines in his work with children, youth and music. These main lines in his pedagogical work are closely related to contemporary thoughts on music, education and psychology. One line is related to contemporary thoughts on the human body, rhythm and movement where Brodin was inspired by the rhythmic pedagogy of Jacues-Dalcroze, by Bartók and his relation to foolk music and rhythm and by jazz music. Another line is related to new knowledge of children's need and of new pedagogy. He was well-informed on these matters through his personal contacs with contemporary psycho-therapeuts and pedagogues (Poul Bjerre, A.S. Neill) and through his reading of the inter-war educational magazine Pedagogiska spörsmål (starting in 1923), where articles by Brodin and other teachers at Olofskolan also were published. In this magazine he found information on educational and psychological ideas tried out at reform schools all over the world. He also participated in international congresses arranged by The New Education Fellowship. He followed new ideas on education and psychology in Sweden. Brodin's experience of music education in Olofskolan was a prerequisite of his way of composing childen's songs and based on his knowledge of children's needs and development. His songs arouses the imagination and the lust of creating your own songs, in a playful way they guide you into the grown up world through references to different kinds of music. It is obvious, then, that Brodin was inspired by modern science and modern views on chilren's psychology, culture, education and it is possible to see him as a good example of a "musisk" music teacher, with his holistic approach to chilrens' education, his immanent critizism towards modem technocratic society as compared to Nielsen's discussion of "den musiske bevægelse" (1994, p. 180-190). It is also possible to see him as a fore-runner of the music therapy movement.