Wednesday, March 18, 2009

My Life Through Music

In our path through life we sometimes comes upon one of those things we like to call "defining moments," and I had mine this evening while listening to Bob Dylan. One of my friends lost his envelope of car cd's and I was making him another one as a gift.

When you do something like this for a friend or for yourself in preparation for a driving vacation, or just filling up your Ipod, it involves not just going through your music collection, but also doing a bit of time traveling in the process.

Music has always been part of my life. My earliest memories were of what we called PWCS, or people who could sing. This meant astonishing voices filling my early years of emerging consciousness. I grew up with Mario Lanza, Bing Crosby, Patsy Cline, Nat King Cole, and Perry Como. This was added to and filled out when my aunt and uncle immigrated and brought with them entire symphonies that entered my spirit one piano note at a time, and sometimes came out as Jazz when they got together with  friends and played for fun.

There were a lot of things about growing up in Las Vegas that sucked, but music wasn't one of them. I developed a passionate love of Jazz and Blues that stays with me to this day. It's what made me think the Beatles were kind of sissy boys and instead made me hand over my pennies for The Stones, The Doors, Cream, and most everything that came out of Motown, except maybe the Supremes. I preferred Aretha and Etta James.

The patterns of my life always come with musical accompaniment. Interwoven among the memories of a very serious activist who spent her days working against the Vietnam war and choosing Dylan as my visionary spokesman over other more pretty voices. It was an interesting paradigm shift for me to choose the message now instead of the music or simply the best PWCS.

This moment of wanting music to be more than sounds on a plate, was a moment of waking up that has continued to this day. I will always believe it was not politicans who brought down the wall, but rock and roll. I will always believe without the protest songs of the 60's, the anti-war movement would not have taken root so effectively. I could go on with examples, but you get the picture. For me, music makes up a large part of the tapestry I am and will become. It comes with faces of have loved, tears I have shed, places I have lived, and dreams I saw myself taking part in. Music, unlike anything else, has the power to change the world.



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