136. Our Song

            While there are all varieties of music and here in America we enjoy them all, the best thing about music in America is just the enjoyment. We pick artists to idolize and buy their albums and concert tickets but the truly best American music is that which comes from the heart. It is that music which brings us together. I have never been more aware of that then since we have gone into quarantine for COVID19.

            As a kid I would listen to my grandpa play the fiddle or mandolin and teach me new songs, songs that I now know are ancient from across the shores passed down through the centuries. So many of those songs I now teach the lyrics to my students in the forms of ballads from the borderlands or spirituals from the plantations. And there are the hymns that I learned in church or heard played by my aunt at the piano.

            So many melodies haunt our existence in plaintive prayers sung in cathedral choirs or played on bagpipes in the Green Mountains above a misty hayfield. And we always add melodies and songs to our canon. Lately I’ve been hearing songs sung from balconies in the city or, the other day, my friend and his wife played the school fight song from the back of their pick up while their son drove them through town at the head of a Light Up the Night parade to honor our students who are now prevented from participating in school events.

            And now, in our time of isolation, many of our most revered and famous artists are performing concerts from their living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms or front yards for all of us. They are using their cell phones to record or their cameras from studios—all depending on what they have. These plaintive cries, these melodious prayers, are part of our existence and a beauty incomprehensible except in their offering. We all have it within us, within our souls, within our lungs, the very breath of our existence. I am so thankful for the songs, the music we all have to offer, no matter how strong or weak our voice, it is there within us and now is when we must make our song heard. Now is the time to sing, to let your voice be heard, to praise the creator, to lament your sorrows, to sing your joy, to let your fellow people know you are here and alive.