HOPE REKINDLED
In recent years,I have become increasingly fearful that the enjoyment of the genteel art of fine music was disappearing from our culture.
I have lamented the strange mutations which have been taking place relentlessly in our musical heritage. I have, at times, stepping to, I'm sure, the very edge of overdoing it in these pages and elsewhere. Music is of special importance to me because I have been a part of the world of music since I was a youngster.
There are million of you out there who actually like the popular songs of today and there are those of us who are sure we remember when "it was better". That's keeping the situation on a friendly, civilized basis, and it has interested me because I have always been a part of the musical side of living since I was youngster.
In truth, I never knew any other way of life. I learned to read music before I could read regular books. Nothing fancy, of course, "elemertary Dr. Watson ", but, from the start I have been appreciative of many kinds of music. Grades..Levels..Specific types such as marches and massive presentations by brass bands of by massive pipe organs. Then, there would be ethnic variations- many of the very same songs in ethnic settings and instrumentals. Hula stuff, Latin-American,Russian, Hungarian, everybody's folk, C&W. swampy ,music from down river, plain old Hillbilly and on the present ear-span we have heard jazz give way to big band treatments, to glitzy,odd-titled groups spun off from the big bands, video versions and it oozed into the culturally surfaced forms called "rock" - some good, some otherwise...And yet, in my book all had purpose and intent...Something worthy. All,forms had value and purpose. I can't say "good" reasons - not that kind of purpose at all, but rather a sign of regeneration and growth from primitive basics.
A musical note in the news this very day from Dumbarton, Scotland has heartened me no end and given me a needed assurance that all is not lost and that, indeed music will endure for the foreseeable future. All is well with the general scope of musical talent world-wide as is evidenced by accounts of the latest Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association Championship competitions there last week. Bagpipers came in droves to drone and chant and And fill the Scottish air with sterling scurlings playing the only musical instrument I know of ever tob e declared illegal as a weapon of war. It waa forbidden after the Battle of Culloden.
The Scottish Bagpipe, an essential part of my musical heritage, does not stand forth as one of my prime favorites. I say that if people are flocking to pipe playing places in such impressive numbers - both oldsters and youthful newcomers - the general world of music is well off To those who, today, are saying that rock and rap have their place and the farther away the better; bagpipers have been accused of always walking as they play. Scoffers say it's because they are always trying to get away from all the noise.
So, we laugh at bagpipers; we scorn rap artists and acid rock groups...others,too...but the sounds from Scotland are signs for all of us to have healthy hopes for future harmony among our many factions.
A.L.M. May 29, 2004 [c540wds]
