"The Day the Music Died"

Don McLean sang about Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper Richardson’s deaths when he wrote the lyrics, “The Day the Music Died” in his beloved “American Pie.” Current events make me think of another sad meaning to those memorable words. Anyone who’s worked with teens over the past forty years will relate. 

As a high school ball player and forensic team member, I recall quiet trips to events. Coaches didn’t turn on the bus or van’s single radio because they wanted us focused on our competition. The ride home was another story. Team members honed negotiation skills to select a radio station from the many choices others shouted out. Once noisy teens determined the favorite, they convinced the driver to crank the volume high enough that riders in the back seat could hear the lyrics clearly. Music was a group activity in those golden days.

Over the four decades of my teaching and coaching career, this changed. During my first twenty some years of loading kids in a district vehicle to haul them to distant schools, life continued much as it had when I was a participant. Passengers were expected to be quiet as they would be in a prayer chapel going to our destination. However, trips home began with lively discussions about what music to listen to and raucous sing-alongs to ever-changing tunes. This was karaoke before it became a popular party fun.

My favorite memories of these good old days revolve around December bus trips when girls who loved to carol filled the seats. Headlights guided us homeward over the dark plains while greenish console lights inside set a holiday mood. Sweet voices of tired round-ballers sang about hay-filled mangers, heralding angels, gift-bearing wise men, and silent nights. Following those serious toned old tunes, the vocalists would throw in a crazy version of “Jingle Bells” or “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” I may have been exhausted after a 16-hour day teaching and coaching, but I treasured those after-game songfests.

Technology that I normally loved assassinated these singalongs. Over time, as more teens climbed onto buses with personal devices and earbuds, travel became quiet as a morgue. Eventually, the driver or I  picked the radio station uncontested because the passengers were listening to individual playlists. By the time I retired, I had to wave my hands or tap someone on the shoulder to make contact. 

The positive side of this new reality is that no one has to listen to music he or she hates. Folks who don’t enjoy interacting with others slip into private worlds while sitting shoulder to shoulder and remain there until the vehicle stops. The negative involves the same issue. No one learns to deal with the frustration of other people’s preferences.

The element that makes me saddest is that pre- individual electronic devices, music brought students, coaches, and drivers together. It didn’t isolate them. Those mostly dead after-game soirees taught tolerance for other’s musical tastes, negotiating skills, and an appreciation for noisy camaraderie.

The Force: Music

It’s interesting how certain tunes and lyrics transport our minds from the present to another time and place. I can’t listen to “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog” without finding myself traveling backward through time to age fifteen when I rode shotgun up and down the main drag of a small southwest Kansas town. With our windows rolled down, summer breezes riffled our hair until a comb could hardly pass through it. Oncoming drivers blared horns to greet one another as part of the nightly ritual. These discordant sounds disrupted KOMA tunes that established the rhythm of our popping bubble gum.

To this day, listening to oldies triggers an out of body experience for me. It’s impossible to believe more than four decades have passed since those notes first burned their way into memory, making a recording more permanent than any 8- track tape or vinyl disc that spun round and round on a turntable. Every one of those songs is a treasure trove of almost forgotten sensory experience: sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.

Though I’ve been happily married for nearly forty years, I can’t listen to the Moody Blues sing “Nights in White Satin” without thinking of every broken heart I ever survived. Oddly, I don’t think it’s the words that elicit those memories. That wavering, haunting melody plucks my emotions as if they were strings on a big old Irish harp, leaving me wrung out and raw as if a break up just happened.

It isn’t just old rock songs that have this effect on me. Sitting in church on Sunday morning listening to “Rock of Ages” or “How Great Thou Art” carries me back to five- year-old me perched next to my Grandma in the pew. I feel the remembered warmth of morning sun coming through emerald, crimson, and amethyst stained glass that depicted Bible stories I was learning in Sunday school. I smell my Grandma’s floral scent and see her hands holding a worn hymnal. I hear her tremulous voice singing those beloved words. When I hear those hymns, she’s with me still.

A song that distances me from my own lifetime is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I can’t listen to its arresting rhythm without tears filling my eyes. As its notes wash over me, the stanzas send chills up my spine. I envision tent-lined camps filled with homesick, scared young men fighting for life and country. I see them sitting around flickering cook fires, running roughened fingers over pages in treasured Bibles, seeking comfort and strength for whatever was coming. I see lightning and hear trumpets. Juliet Ward Howe’s imagery turns me to jelly every time I hear it.

The same thing happens when I hear “Oh, Danny Boy.” The words and music capture the sorrow of every Irish mother and lover that sent her man into battle or off to America seeking a better life. I don’t know of a more poignant combination of lyrics and melody. If someone plays it on the bagpipes, I’m a goner. No one carries enough tissue to sop up my tears.

Music is a powerful force. It reminds us of who we were and inspires us to be more than we are. 

 

Spring Concert

For some, spring heralds the arrival of green leaves and flowers.  For others, it is a time to plant the garden in anticipation of summer’s bounty.  For me, spring signals the opportunity to fall asleep each night to nature’s orchestra and to awaken to her symphony in the morning. 

After a long winter, I eagerly look forward to the first warm days when I can throw open the windows and actually feel and smell the renewal spring promises.  The fresh breezes clear away the long harbored scents of winter.  

No aerosol purchased from a store can match the sweetness of a breeze floating across miles of open prairie.  (That is if the breeze doesn’t blow through a feedlot first.)  Lilacs and blooming fruit trees add ambience as their scent wafts into the house on an invisible airstream.

But scent doesn’t have anything to do with the music of spring.  It simply sets the stage for the concerts to come.  As soon as it is warm enough, I crank open the windows, hoping to capture the sounds of the season.  Since I live near water, I hope to catch the peepers celebrating their nightly courtship rituals. 

  A myriad of owls and night hawks swoop through the nearby trees searching for a late supper, announcing their success with a series of screeches and squawks--like a string section warming up.  When things settle down a bit, I listen carefully for the crickets to begin their recital. 

  It is amazing to think the simple rubbing of two bristly legs together can make music and clue the listener in to the temperature at the same time.  As the nights warm, I wait to hear the deep bass of the bull frogs calling from the creek below and the rising hum of cicadas building to a rousing crescendo.  After an evening of original music, the temperature drops, bringing the lullaby to a close.

The best of part of sleeping with an open window in the spring is the knowledge that another concert begins at dawn with entirely new orchestration.  Before I detect the first rays of sun, the birds outside my room begin their warm up exercises with isolated notes.  

It is impossible to ignore the good cheer enlivening the day, so I crawl out of bed to stand at the window where I watch my private symphony of robins, finches, jays, and larks perform.  Unaware as they seem of their audience, I think they sense my presence and sing more loudly.  This beats using an alarm clock to awaken me any day.

Life is full of simple pleasures if we know where to search.  Discovering nature’s music is as simple as opening the bedroom window on the first warm evening.  So pop the latch, pull up the shade, and settle back for some of the easiest listening around.