Poetic ‘Being in the World’: A relational approach to popular music in early childhood music education in Italy

In this short ‘Practice and Perspectives’ opinion article, I focus on the role of popular music in early childhood music education in Italy. I aim to shift the perspective taken by the Italian National Curriculum Guidelines (2025) from asking which music we should teach to considering children’s musical experiences. This involves, among other things, recognizing popular music as a rich, multidimensional source for exploring and reconceptualizing children’s music learning experiences and competences. As an early childhood music educator, I feel the urgent need for a new approach to early childhood education and curriculum in Italy. The latest guidelines implicitly value mainly classical music and the Italian classical heritage, without making clear and explicit references to other types of music, especially popular music. Here, I frame four cases from children’s daily musical experiences, highlighting the pervasive presence and profound significance of popular music in Italian children’s musical lives, and illustrating how popular music is neither simply a genre to be evaluated and selected, nor merely a bridge between the two microsystems of school and home. When words and music come together in popular song, there is created the poetic dimension of human existence, making it a powerful candidate for a deeply fulfilling poetic and musical way of inhabiting the world.