70s Folk Lullabies

My early memories of music are very different than the experiences I associate with the music I love now. I don’t even have a “first” memory of music because I genuinely don’t remember it not being in my life. Like our first exposure to most things, mine came through my parents. Both of my parents are really musical people. My dad has played the guitar for most of his life – and definitely all of mine. Those of you in my sophomore English class might remember me giving my PechaKucha presentation about this. There are pictures of me sitting on my dad’s lap while he plays guitar that I can’t even remember. When he gets together with his family (and sometimes friends), my dad always busts out the guitar and they sit around singing 70s folk songs. When I was really little, I loved being in the thick of this – singing along to the songs that I did know in the off-key tone of a four year-old and banging along on the tambourine when I didn’t.

Because my dad works in music as a piano technician, it obviously made sense that I, like many Uni students, would take piano lessons from a young age. I was in kindergarten when I started, around age 5, and I remember standing in my piano teacher’s living room – a room that was unfamiliar to me at the time, but that I would come to spend many hours in throughout the next 6 years of my life. Those years would introduce me to music in a way that I hadn’t before: the more technical side. Not the same type of memories as my father singing John Denver and James Taylor to me at bedtime. Like most elementary children, this was not my top priority – I would have much rather spent my time playing outside than spending time after school practicing piano like was expected of me.

The other thing I remember is being an obnoxious singer at church services from a very young age. Singing was the only thing that got energetic 6 year old me through an hour long mass of boring sitting and listening to an old man talk. The old couples in the pew in front of us often would turn around after mass and compliment my singing. I now realize that it wasn’t actually my singing they enjoyed – of course it wasn’t, I was six and could maybe carry a very simple tune. It was the energy and young excitement that I carried with it that they appreciated. Even as I am older now, I still run into older couples from my old parish and they tell me how much they miss hearing me sing during mass.

Some of these factors of music are things that I still carry with me today: I love my father’s music and am back in the thick of it when he gets out the guitar when we have company over; I still sing during mass on the weekends, even when most of my friends my age hardly open their mouths during mass; I don’t play piano anymore but the fundamental understanding of music that it gave me is something that I am infinitely grateful for today, despite all the years I spent bemoaning going to lessons every week. However, my relationship with music has obviously matured with me. I spend my summers making trips back and forth to Chicago for concerts with one of my best friends (my current concert count is 9, soon to be 10, with multiple repeats of certain artists – I don’t even want to think about how much money that is). I wake up at all hours of the day to hear new songs from my favorite artists the minute they come out. This intense passion I carry for music is directed in a different place than when I was younger, but it was definitely something that stemmed from the role music played in my childhood.