The field of music education research is often concerned with studies and measurements that highlight the deficits rather than inquire about the developmental and dispositional strengths exhibited in children's musical behaviors. Before We Teach Music puts forth an alternative view, examining childhood as a site where enculturation mixes with individual experience to create foundational ways of being musical. Through interdisciplinary scholarship and multiple sources of data, author Lori A. Custodero reveals how our capacities to live musically and to cultivate a musical life are derived from the legacies of childhood.

The book features excerpted musical autobiographies from over 200 music education graduate students that reveal the full spectrum of music's effect on developmental stages. For example, early childhood memories evoke strong associations with family members; dispositional practices and expressions of musical identities surface in middle childhood; and strong memories of disruption, renewal, and resistance tend to occur in later adolescence and early adulthood. These stories generate the reader's own recollections and provoke a process of self-reflection on how the past informs the present, and how our current actions help shape future experiences. Moreover, Before We Teach Music addresses what parents, teachers, performers, and composers learn from their encounters with children, raising important questions about the nature of musicality, the roles of music in identity, and the complexity of human musical trajectories.