Jim Kohlberg Music

With sweet melodies or jarring lyrics, music speaks to us all. Everyone has music that is special to them, that tugs on their heart strings or kisses their lips with a smile. There are songs that chip at scabs and scars, songs that pull tears or conjure joy, and songs in which every word of every line elicits a memory. In The Music Never Stopped, directed by Jim Kohlberg, we are presented with this same situation for two different characters through two different genres of music. All throughout his childhood, Gabriel Sawyer was imprinted on by his father’s music. They would play a game where Mr. Sawyer would ask Gabe about a song from his time, and Gabe would recall the story he was told about that song. Every song had a memory attached …show more content…
As Gabe grew up, he began to develop his own taste in music, music that was very different than the music his father had shared with him. Gabe’s music was psychedelic; it had a message, typically a political one, and an intent to catalyze young people. It praised drugs and free love, and seemed loud and nonsensical to Mr. Sawyer. Mr. Sawyer had a difficult time accepting that this music was important to his son. He didn’t like that this music was what spoke to him. With this disconnect in their relationship, conflict quickly arose. Long story short, Gabe ended up leaving home in a rage, and was not reunited with his family again for another twenty years. With a benign tumor, a large portion of his memories (and his ability to make new memories) vanished. Mr. Sawyer then takes initiative part way through the movie and tries to use music to reconnect with his son. A music therapist …show more content…
The brain tumor was in no way Gabriel’s fault, but it prohibited him from seeing just how hard his father was working to love him, to reconnect with him as father and son once had. To have Mr. Sawyer die in the end was heartbreaking, but bittersweet because we know he died happy, having gotten to fix things with Gabriel. Every child has some new, generational attribute they pick up that rubs their parents the wrong way. This foreign favorite to the parents can create a clash between their child and themselves. Music was never the friction in my relationship with my parents, but I think most teens can identify with wanting to develop their own style in something— be it in politics, fashion, music, religion, etc.—that their parents do not get. Parents have a difficult time letting their children form their own opinions about things because they have taken care of them for their entire lives, they’ve made all the decisions and passed on all their own judgements for the child to acquire as well. This idea of becoming a full adult, totally detached from the parent, doesn’t have a date to it; there is no age, or phase, or rite of passage that signifies this to tell parents to let go. Kohlberg really tried to show this dilemma from both Gabe’s (the son/child) and Mr. Sawyer’s (the father/parent) side. Having only experienced it from the child’s side myself, this movie was eye-opening to how the dad was