Expressing...

Your Music

“My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.”

Ray Charles

When I was a child, there was almost always music playing in our house. I grew up listening to my grandmother banging out ragtime boogie-woogie on an old upright piano. When she wasn't playing, we listened to big-bands like the Dorsey's on the radio, and the Hit-Parade on TV. We had a record player that sometimes played hymns, and sometimes, Frank Sinatra or Rosemary Clooney. My dad was a particular fan of Tennessee Ernie Ford, so we heard a lot of, “You load sixteen tons. What do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt..” Even when things were truly bad in our home, music was the backdrop.

Many researchers have studied the role of music in human evolution. The oldest musical instruments found so far date back only about 40,000 years—bone flutes in Europe. But, researchers believe there were much earlier instruments made from hollowed out tree trunks, limbs and animal skins that wouldn't have survived the centuries. Humans, however, gained the full range of vocal sounds more than 500,000 years ago, so it's likely that sung sounds predated spoken language, and were an early form of human communication, identification, and tribal bonding. Some have even suggested that music was the social glue that held early societies together.

For ever and always, music has demonstrated our emotional state. In our choice of music, we communicate our feelings more authentically than in words. The music that we have loved for all of our lives comes from the deepest layers of family, culture, and soul. When you think back to your own childhood, what soil are your musical roots buried in? When you hear that music, where in your body do you feel it? What emotional state does it evoke?

                                                              In the Spirit,

                                                                   Jane