music stuff

[maribou]

So, here's the thing. I don't remember my parents listening to music when I was a child, though I had my own records (_The Carrot Seed_, Sesame Street, Beatrix Potter, Disco Duck, the disco version of Wizard of Oz, _Inch by Inch_, and myriad other things I could sing but not name). However, in high school I reinvestigated my parents record collection, and interrogated them a bit: turns out some of my most instinctively favorite musicians are the ones they listened to the most before I was old enough to notice. So now, due to a steady diet of Davis, Mingus, Monk, and Brubeck as a child, jazz is comfortable for my ears in a way it doesn't seem to be for most of my friends, even those who love the stuff. I'm not particularly good at playing it (can't solo worth a fucking shit, would be the problem), but the rhythms are instinctive, and if I'm listening, the next note always seems like a natural choice. Even when it's deliberately perverse. But I couldn't claim to know the genre, other than in the sketchiest of ways. In fact, when I try to increase my conscious knowledge of what's going on, my subconscious tends to reach new levels of ingenuity in getting me to forget it. I wonder if everybody has stuff they're like that about.

Comments

[hopeyhopey.livejournal.com]

I know just what you mean. I'm a vocalist, so I'm very much aware that the musical styles I'm most comfortable with have been influenced by what my parents listened to and played themselves. My father was a church musician of a sort of southern-white-gospel style, and when I was in my early 20s I joined a small gospel choir, where they were convinced I was black underneath my white skin. :) My parents also listened to four-part acapella vocal jazz like the Lettermen and the Hi-Los, and I am certain that influenced the ease with which I sing jazz. Like you said, the rhythms are instinctive in a way that they aren't for other people.

I plan to have children at some point in the future, and believe me, I'm going to remember this lesson and expose my children to lots of different kinds of music when they're small.