Musical Roots
To say I love music would be a bit of an understatement. I don’t remember really learning to sing specifically, I remember singing in school choirs and joined a church choir even though I hadn’t been attending church. I can even recall my mom asking me to sing for someone and being so shy that I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to be the centre of attention, boy does that make me laugh now.
I am sure I am not alone in the experience that music was an integral part of my youth and I have visceral memories attached to so many songs that I hear. Growing up I was very fortunate to have parents who loved music. We lived directly across from the beach in a little town that filled up with tourists each summer and our home turned into a revolving free summer resort for family & friends. I actually even had to give up my room each summer and share a room with my sister to accommodate our guests. Our yard contained a volleyball/badminton net, a pace for tents, and our patio contained our very own Juke Box (my sister still has that Juke Box!). Each spring our friend's who owned a record store would come to visit around Easter and bring boxes of 45s (for those younger than me these are small versions of vinyl records that only held 2 songs, that A side with the chart topper and the B side a lesser known song) of the latest songs we heard on the radio. We would spend hours listening and choosing the records that would create our summer playlist and type up the tags for the Juke Box selection display. We were now ready for our summer guests. |
The summer would begin on the May long weekend giving us a taste of what was to come and by the time school was out we would be in full swing. The house full of people, days spent swimming and roasting our bodies in the sunshine and evenings full of barbeques, cocktails (adults only of course), fun and frivolity and constant conversation. The beach had multiple fire pits that were communal in nature and filled up with people roasting hot dogs and marshmallows and bringing guitars for a little entertainment from time to time.
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Crazy Carpet:
That carpet was created by my Dad. They were a young family and working hard to make ends meet and couldn't really afford new carpet. So they went to local carpet stores and got old samples and Dad cut them into these crazy shapes and put it all together into a carpet that covered our whole living area. The bonus was if a piece ever got ruined Dad would just cut it out and replace it with another. Ya that's the kind of creativity I come from. |
As a young girl my parents put me in piano lessons, as I seemed to have this natural ability and draw to music and loved watching my grandmother play. My lessons were with a strict teacher, you know the kind that cracked the ruler on the side of the piano when you didn't do it jut right, it was all about discipline and learning the rules of music. I was learning lots and even won an award but my soft little soul couldn't take the aggressive nature of this teaching style. We tried a different teacher with a more creative approach but by then I was too scared to let myself feel that freedom. When I was 12 my parents gave my sister and I classical Yamaha guitars and guitar lessons with a folk singing duo who taught basic chords and got us to sing while we played. I still own that guitar and it was an important key in the unlocking of my creativity.
The music on the Juke Box, the guitars around the fire and learning to play were the Soundtrack of my life adding punctuation to the experience. Those songs remind me of those times, my first crush and my first kiss. They remind me of all the wonderful people that filled our home and of my parents, my creative social parents who had no idea of the social butterfly monster they were creating. That is where it all started, the history behind my love for music which continued into my early adulthood with hours listening to radio and my record collection and seeing many of my favorite artists live in concert. And then it stopped. Not a dead stop a slow shutting off of the tap of this key component of my life force, the essence that makes me feel alive. |