Last modified: Sunday, January 21, 2007 12:14 AM EST Sounds good in city schools Playing music means just what it says it does. It's a time to play, to flirt trombone with flute, drum with triangle, harpsichord with piano or soar alto with soprano, or engage in a game of catch-me-if-you-can tag with glissando or the stepping-stone frolic of the jete. "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play," wrote philosopher Plato, " than in a year of conversation." Just think of the term "glee" club, and it's not stretch of imagination to summon shining faces buttered with smiles. Glee-full. And so there is celebration in the restoration of instrumental music at Attleboro's three middle schools, a phoenix hauled from the ashes by new Superintendent Pia Durkin, nudged by many parents who placed a value on playing an instrument and wanted musical instruction restored. The sole shame in all this is the reminder that every year, through funding crunches, music and other creative arts are stolen from school systems across the country that so desperately need just this sort of outlet for creative and/or stressed kids. In Attleboro, it the first time in two years students have had a chance to participate in band. A financial crisis in the school department eliminated the middle school program in 2004, although choral groups remained. How wrong-headed. Who knows what the research says, but any child who loves playing an instrument can tell you there's profound joy in joining the herd to make something together that would be out of reach when attempted alone. It's the kind of cohesion with a mission that's applauded all the time in school athletics. Why would it be any different in music? When did the valuable "play" of music become expendable? My guess is that red marks are slashed through items beyond the comprehension of the budget cutter. Otherwise, music would be a priority in every school in the country. There's as much "play" in music as on the football field. At least as much. Want proof? Consider the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, a product of Soviet-controlled restrictions in that country after World War II. In the mid-1950s, the stranglehold on the arts loosened and Penderecki, who'd been working on music in secret, entered a young composers contest and won. He went on to write a number of illustrious pieces of music and eventually joined Yale University. But one of his creations is classic "play" - his Capriccio for Violin and Orchestra, peppered with the sounds of a typewriter, bell, sirens and whistles. A friend, an artist and musician, creates "thumb pianos" out of tin cans, then custom paints them. Instruments, he was saying the other evening, were often crafted from "found" materials, like his sardine cans. A "musician" was someone who saw heaven in scraps. It was not about competition to be best, as music so often can be today. It was social or spiritual urgency made manifest. Musician Wynton Marsalis spoke this very imperative, the slave's need for improvisation in "Jazz," a film by historian Ken Burns. "There were two types of slave music in the United States: a secular music that consisted of field hollers, shouts, and moans that used folk tales and folk motifs, and that made use of homemade instruments from the banjo (which became a standard American instrument in the 19th century, largely through minstrelsy), tambourine, and calabashes to washboards, pots, spoons, and the like," Marsalis said. "From the 1740s, many states had banned the use of drums in fear that Africans would use them to create a system of communication in order to aid rebellion. Nonetheless, blacks managed to generate percussion and percussive sounds, using other instruments or their own bodies." Their own bodies. You see, people through all time have been pining to make music, to speak with an instrument what lies in the heart, often deeply hidden. Eighty-nine percent of Americans polled believe that arts education is important enough to be taught in schools, according to Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit for advancing the arts in America, "but the sad truth is, your kids spend more time at their lockers than in arts classes." Yet school is the only opportunity for many children to learn music. Not everyone can afford private lessons. What's happening at your child's school? Let Attleboro's new resolve embolden you. Play may be just what your child is missing most of all. BETSY SHEA-TAYLOR, a former editor and writer for The Sun Chronicle, is a freelance writer. She can be reached at prosewing@aol.com.