Music

Music is one of those things we easily take for granted. Just about everyone likes some kind of music. Just about every culture has some kind of musical component. There must be something essentially human about music. It is impossible to imagine human existence devoid of all music. But what is music? What is its evolutionary function? I have no idea. I suppose there are books out there that would speculate for me. And to be honest, I have read some theories, but I prefer to preserve the mystery.

The first music I can remember is my mother singing and humming while she did housework. Sometimes she listened to the radio, but sometimes she provided her own musical background, mostly old popular ballads. I don't think my mother ever sang in public, except perhaps in church, but she could carry a tune pretty well, and I guess it made the housework go by more agreeably. I never thought of my parents as being particularly musical, but my dad did sing in the church choir, and they eventually bought a stereo and a collection of records, mostly popular tunes from the forties and fifties. Like everyone else, they liked Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore and, apparently, Tennessee Ernie Ford. I think they also had some interest in country music and dancing, although that was hampered by my dad's bad leg. Well, it was San Antonio, Texas.

In any case, at some point my mother decided my brothers and I should take music lessons. So each in our turn was encouraged to take up an instrument. I also made some effort to join the band in junior high school, first attempting the trumpet, then the clarinet, but the learning curve was too steep. Earlier I had been lured to take lessons on the Hawaiian guitar by some seductive saleswoman who cornered my mom with a convincing pitch. I didn't get far with the group lessons, but by then I was hooked, so my mom bought me an electric steel guitar and found a real teacher, a guy with his own country and western band who taught steel and Spanish guitar lessons at his house only a few blocks away. I picked it up pretty quickly, and wish I'd stuck with it. I could probably find work easily now I'm living here in Austin.

But eventually I abandoned the steel guitar and switched over to the accordion, which had been the instrument of choice for my younger brother Randy. Soon all three of us were taking lessons at the Rosance School of Accordion in San Antonio. And once again I got pretty good before abandoning that instrument as well, however not before getting my mom to invest in a professional quality accordion, which she later sold back to the Rosances. Then while I was in high school I rediscovered the guitar, the standard guitar this time, and that seemed to stick. I never took any lessons, but I knew enough music to pick it up quickly, and as anyone who has ever played the guitar will tell you, it's a very easy instrument to play, although a very difficult one to play well.

Music was always a big part of my life. I never gave it much thought, but as my long suffering wife can attest, my idea of recreation has often been getting together with friends to play guitars and sing folk tunes, and later some rock and pop as well. My taste in music was fairly typical for my generation. Early on my friends and I discovered Bob Dylan, who definitely made a lasting impression, but we were pretty much in tune with everyone else. It was the era of rock, and we followed nearly all the popular artists, with a special interest in the singer-songwriters like Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, whose music we learned to play and sing for our own amusement, something we still do when we get together.

But after forty or fifty years, my tastes have evolved, especially lately. At some point fairly early on, while I was in college and graduate school, I began to be interested in classical music. At first a friend where I worked part time tried to educate me, but eventually I found that my tastes were more for chamber music.  Initially, I tended to prefer Vivaldi and Bach and, for some reason, Purcell. However, with time my tastes expanded to include Chopin, Ravel, Satie, and Schubert, but with a few exceptions not much Mozart or Beethoven. And eventually I drifted toward some more recent music by English composers like Ralph Vaughn Williams, most likely because of the links to English folk music. I found I liked most classical music, with the exception of opera. For some reason, although I have tried to educate myself, I find I don't really have a taste for most classical opera. There are a few exceptions, I get a kick out of Wagner's Ring cycle, and of course I like some of the popular arias. I also like most classical and modern ballets. And as I've grown older I enjoy listening to classical music more than just about anything other than jazz.

It's kind of strange how my musical tastes have evolved. While I still sometimes play some of the old folk and rock tunes on my guitar, especially when I get together with my friends, on my own I find that when I play guitar, it's generally to practice the classical pieces I've learned since buying my Jose Ramirez classical guitar. But more frequently now I tend to play the repertoire of popular tunes I've learned to play on my piano keyboard, mostly show tunes and jazz numbers. In fact, I'd play even more jazz if I had the chops. Nearly all the music I listen to on the radio, or stream on my Sonos system, is jazz: Real Jazz on Sirius/XM or the Thelonious Monk channel on Pandora. When I hear the old folk and rock music from my youth I still enjoy listening, and some of it strikes me as really good music, although I have had difficulty sustaining interest in more recent performers. But having rediscovered jazz, I've been amazed by how much I enjoy listening to it, both recent releases and especially the vintage recordings by the masters: Ellington, Basie, Art Blakey, and also Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, and especially Monk. Thelonious Monk is by far my favorite jazz composer.

I owe much of my interest in jazz to my friend and colleague Peter, with whom I once taught a course that began with a brief history of jazz. We always started the course with a screening of Great Day in Harlem, a wonderful little documentary from 1994 about a photo shoot by Art Kane for Esquire magazine in 1958 when he captured 57 of the jazz greats of that era standing on a front porch stoop in Harlem. The filmmakers interviewed as many of those who were still living as they could and interspersed clips of performances and other footage. This little film is one of the best introductions to American jazz available, especially the DVD version that includes additional footage about the making of the film. Somehow watching that documentary made me realize what a very little I knew about American music, and opened up to me the vast repertoire of jazz.

But what seems to have clinched my transformation was the purchase of our latest new automobile which came, as they all seem to do now, with a free subscription to Sirius/XM satellite radio. Naturally we began listening to what was available, experimenting with the hundreds of choices. But soon we found that we were leaving our car radio tuned to Real Jazz all the time. It was addictive. No commercials, except for Sirius/XM, and very informed comments from the hosts, who often provide insightful background on the music and performers. It's sheer marketing genius to give away these free subscriptions. It worked like a charm on us. Once we'd found Real Jazz I had no intention of letting my subscription lapse. In fact, I soon found I wanted to listen not only in the car, but at home as well, which led to the purchase of our Sonos sound system and the subsequent discovery of Pandora Internet radio and the Thelonious Monk channel which we now also stream on our Sonos system.

What I like about listening to jazz is the way the music always seems both familiar and fresh. I'm not sure I can describe it any better than that. I never seem to tire of listening to these two jazz channels. For variety I listen to several classical music stations, but none of those is as dependable as the jazz channels in providing the entertainment I want. Of course, with Sonos I can now stream almost my entire music library, nearly all of which I now have in digital form on a hard drive on my home network. And sometimes I will listen to something specific from my own library, but most of the time I find we are listening to the Thelonious Monk channel on Pandora in the house and Real Jazz in the car. Who knows, my tastes may continue to evolve. Perhaps I'll grow tired of a constant musical diet of jazz. But it hasn't happened so far.