The didactics of singing and intellectual disabilities: How to teach warm-up exercises

Abstract

Everybody is entitled to all the rights that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set. The European Convention of Human Rights and the European Social Charter are considered the most emblematic instruments of formal support of this level of the Council of Europe. These rights are protected by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Committee of Social Rights. But vulnerable groups see many of these human rights broken with too much assiduity. That is why through laws, educational policies and day-a-day practices we must go on trying and helping these people to develop their quality of life, fighting for this cause to make their rights come true and respected. The work we present in this paper takes the reference of the II Action Plan for People with Down Syndrome in Spain for the period 2009-2013 (Down España, 2008), which promotes the right and the duty to participate in social life, the autonomy and the social competence. The action of music on living beings has been demonstrated from the most faraway olden days (Bence & Méreaux, 1988), for being a means of communication and expression that becomes appropriate especially when working with people with learning disabilities (Boltrino, 2008). An especially sensitive group to music is people with intellectual disabilities (PwID). The voice is a natural resource of the human being, through which we can communicate. It has been proved through magnetic resonances that, when we sing, the neuromotor rehabilitation and the reactivation of specific brain interconnections are facilitated. This is because these specific brain interconnections are basic in the production of neurotrophins, which are indicators of brain plasticity (De Fonzo, 2012), and which are very important for the minimization of the effects of the structural and functional injuries of the brain. Although the acquisition of the language in PwID is not different to the acquisition that present people without intellectual disabilities (Lenneberg, 1975; in Casal, in press), they differ in the rhythm of development, which is slower in PwID, but the followed stages are the same. Therefore, more than an alteration, following Carroll (1986; in González-Pérez, 2003), the language disorders constitute a delay. PwID normally present difficulties when using their voices. The glossopharyngeal motor disorders and the muscular mouth discoordination generate little fluent verbal expression, without rhythm and with an unsuitable tonality (González-Pérez, 2003). The plans of work to help them in language disorders are normally centered on articulation, vocalization, and expression? of the spoken word. The voice impostation and the most primitive work of the voice, its warming, are usually pushed into the background. Warm-up exercises are significant for the development of PwID because they are the basis of voice work, for example, when doing speech therapy or singing. When singing, apart from working purely musical facets, we indirectly impact on the diction, vocabulary, self control, self-esteem and socialization (Llamas, 2012). So, how can we train PwID in warm-up exercises? Which would be a good way to do it? Can the activities, included in the designed workshop, be followed by the participants? To what extent? The objectives of this study are to know if the participants can follow the proposed warm-up exercises, which changes are necessary to do in them and consequently, to find out which would be a good way to teach warm-up exercises to PwID, and to present some instructions to do it. So in this paper some considerations and guidelines based on a practical experience realized in the line of the didactics of warm-up exercises, included in a vocal technique workshop with PwID, are presented.