First Song!

Greetings, Dear Readers!

Today, I am going to talk about something that's very exiting and personal -- the birth of a new musician. Or rather, it's the re-birth of an old musician, and I  . . . well, I'd best start at the beginning.

Once upon a time there was a Canadian Folk Rock band from Newfoundland called Great Big Sea. And Great Big Sea has a front man and lead singer/guitarist (who also plays other instruments) who when you see him on stage is infectious and charming and brilliant, he's obviously highly talented as well as highly learned in the art of music.

And Great Big Sea came to Minnesota to play a concert at a free festival, and there at the festival was a woman who was feeling unhappy and repressed and smothered because she had, over a decade ago, lost her voice to the ravages of pneumonia, double bronchitis, and poorly managed asthma. In fact, it had been so long for this woman that she hadn't even realized how fraught her soul was at the loss of her music.

The woman had known of Great Big Sea for some time, but had never seen them in concert before. So, curious (because she wanted to see if they were at all the same in person as they were on the single track she had of theirs), she wound up near the front of the stage, packed in amongst shouting, dancing, singing concert goers.

The music started. The man  . . . her heart knew what he was doing, but her brain couldn't put it into words. Watching the lead singer and his friends (for obviously, they were more, far more, than mere bandmates) not just perform but love the music -- and share the love, and demand their audience love it right along -- set off a spark. Just a small one, but it was enough.

By the end of the concert her world had exploded. Something in her soul that had been dead ever since she realized she had to give up the music came to life again. Colors were more vivid. Sounds were louder. As she walked back to her car and then drove home amid the never-quite quiet city night, she knew what her course had to be.

Find the music again. Look back into the soul, and try to find that which she had thought was banished, long ago. When she found it, she discovered to her shock that a small but life-altering part of her past had also been buried and was now returned to her.

She was Irish. Not just Irish American. Irish. She'd had a great aunt, whom everyone in her family had called 'Mom' McFadden instead of using her first name. Mom was a tiny, fragile, elderly woman when the woman first knew her, but her blue eyes still snapped, her voice still carried an Irish accent that you could break rocks on (despite at least 50 years of living in America), and it was Mom who was the matriarch of the family, not Nana, as the woman had supposed most of her adult life.

Why, the woman wondered, had this memory been set so far aside? Further probing into her memory, released by the music, revealed that Mom had taught the woman her first folk tunes, Molly Malone, and others, now only very dimly remembered. And these songs, in the Irish way, did not flinch from death and drunkenness and poverty and adultery, and that it was the woman's parents who had decreed Mom a bad influence on their young daughter, for even then, the daughter showed unmistakable signs of wanting to live on the social fringe, when her parents wanted her safely in the middle. 

Mom bowed to the parents. The music stopped.

Until Great Big Sea brought it back. The woman remembered other things too. How Mom McFadden's Irish accent was so strong that even her daughter-in-law picked it up, somewhat, along with her son. And the woman's hindbrain remembered that she, too, had imbibed the accent learned and heard at her Irish great-aunt's knee, and began forming, naturally, the words and sounds of the old country, once again, in her speech and in her song. Now that there was no fear of punishment, the woman's brain understood, it was time to bring back not only the notes that were long dormant, but everything else as well.

It was time to remember, without fear, what the child had once known and loved.

She found her guitar, the bold blue acoustic dreadnought, dusted it off, found instruction on the Internet, and set to work. Soon, she discovered that one melody instrument was not enough, and bought penny whistles, knowing through instinct (and perhaps, some dim memory trace) that she could play those, which, sure enough, was true. She found MIDI files and MP3 files and began to sing in earnest, dredging up all she'd ever been taught about how to sing and the whys and wherefores. She discovered, to her astonishment, that the new asthma medications were actually repairing her lungs, and her voice, while ultimately still ruined, was yet good enough to sing around a campfire, or when she visited the 17th century, or with friends in the living room. Her pitch was still sure, her support still decent, her tone had actually improved over the years.

And now, 8 weeks almost to the day that the music returned, the woman (through diligent study and practice!) has successfully married the guitar chords, strumming technique, rhythm and that ever-elusive quality we call 'musicality', to actually be able to play her first song. It's not just vaguely moving from chord to chord with nothing behind it. It's not just hoping that some of the strumming is right, here and there. It is an actual *song*, real *music*, and this woman is quite grateful and proud.

I have had nobody to teach me. I practice alone. I don't have anyone to play with. It has taken 8 full weeks of virtually daily practice, but I can play MUSIC on the GUITAR, an instrument that I did not know or have any experience with when I started.

This is a big deal, Dear Readers. In the middle of everything I had to adjust some stuff because of my eye issues (which, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I will address soon!) -- for instance, I was unable to see the guitar strings for about 10 days, and I still can't see the bottom 2 strings very well -- but I have made those adjustments, I'm pretty sure. (as regards not being able to see the E and B strings, I am putting more effort into learning the strings and fret board by feel/sound alone, and I turn my guitar towards me more than normal to see where things are with my good right eye . . . I'm also considering getting a silver Sharpie and coloring the strings silver to make them stand out against the fret board.)

There were times these past few weeks when I didn't know if I'd ever get anywhere with the guitar. It seemed so unwieldy, and there is still so much to learn that I don't know and need to play catch up on (like, time signatures!) that other instrumentalists can recite in their sleep.

Learning The Lusty Young Smith (a bawdy folk song -- even then, they were fusing genres! -- from the Elizabethan era, true, it only uses 3 chords, but still!) and really making *music* come out of my guitar reassures me no end that I really am going upwards and onwards and not just around in circles.

It feels good.