In my personal experience, when I was first beginning to learn Spanish I used to mix up the days of the week. Then I put the days of the week in Spanish into the English "Days of the Week" song I had learned as a child and I was able to remember them almost instantly. There really is value in learning songs to remember language and also to learn it faster. While studying for an exam, putting vocabulary words into song and creating a rhythm can help it stick in your head, and when it comes exam time you can just pull up the song file from your memory. Learning songs that are important to the culture, such as religious or traditional songs can help preserve the culture as well. Younger children will also be more likely to pick up on the parent's language and be more willing to learn it if they are exposed to it through song, because that's how humans seem to be hard-wired. We can perhaps help prevent so many languages from dying out if we educate the speakers of that particular language that reciting songs may be the key. Encouraging learning the language through song may be the only chance that some people have to preserve their language.
This article provides more information about how the brain works and how songs really do aid in memorization, if you're into that sort of thing. The human mind is crazy powerful and music has a huge impact on memorizing information.
