Power of a teacher is to infuse ideas that will influence mankind: Anil Srinivasan on the music within 

The power of education and more importantly, the power of a teacher is the ability to infuse ideas that will influence mankind, said Anil Srinivasan, pianist and educator, speaking at a lecture demonstration at ThinkEdu Conclave 2019, organised by The New Indian Express on Wednesday.

Keying the humble tune of 'Happy Birthday to You'  on his piano, Anil recalled how the melody was composed by the Hill sisters -two nuns who taught mathematics - to greet students to their classes each morning. The song 'Good Morning To You', which they composed, has evolved over the years to become the popular birthday song. 

The teachers, he said, understood how much more power a simple melody yielded, over the relatively complicated mathematics lessons that followed after. "A sentence of medium complexity that is spoken typically touches about 30 neurotransmitters. The same sentence when it is sung as music is touching 2,75,000 neurotransmitters," he said observing that teens learn better when they listen to music. 

Anil pulled out the all-time kids' classic 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' which was composed by Mozart over 250 years ago and demonstrated how the music follows an open-source construction that will blend with any tune and tempo. Speaking about the marvel of such simple, yet powerful melodies, he said that music at its fundamental core is not an art form, but the ability to recognise the pattern. "Music is the ability to look at disparate data, and start making sense of it and making it into patterns," he said unlike rigorous academics, music is far more inclusive and cannot be politicised easily. He then treated the appreciative audience to a medley of Ilaiyaraaja'a finest - and was the showstopper in more ways than one. 

"Music aids cognitive expansion, data recognition and pattern and acts as a social leveler that brings people together," he said finally playing carnatic song 'Kurai Ondrum Illai' in tandem with 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.