American in Spain

Almost a fortnight ago, Marga’s cousin, Rubén, and his girlfriend, Patri, gave Nora a toy, in the shape of a butterfly, that plays up to 30 different songs. In other modes it will pronounce the letters, and some words that start with them, from the alphabet. But Nora’s not quite at that stage yet, so we keep it in the “music” mode. She absolutely adores this toy. Without fail, as soon as it starts playing music, she starts dancing, which has been a tendency of hers for some time now. The music selection is also perfectly appropriate for Nora, with a mixture of American songs like Oh my darling, Clemintine and Tennessee Waltz and some Spanish pasodobles. The video below is pretty typical of her playing with this lovely toy.
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My guitar playing has dropped off significantly in the past year or two, downgraded from “enough to not forget any songs” to “enough to barely keep finger calluses”. Occasionally when Nora is upset about something or generally demanding to be entertained, I’ll pull out the ol’ six-string and strum a bit for her. To her, I think the guitar is a big sound-making box that amuses her for no more than ten minutes. Last night, I played a bit for her and let her touch the strings. I think she enjoyed how the strummed strings felt on her hand.
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For several months now, my favorite podcast has been Are We Alone?, put out by SETI. At first one might think that a podcast from an organization that has listened to the heavens for years without hearing so much as a peep from the aliens might not have much to talk about, but it turns out that they do: astronomy, anthropology, biology, psychology, etc. It’s more about understanding how humans became what we are and extrapolating that to speculate about alien life.
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It’s weird, the songs we sing to our children. When a song is needed to get a baby through a stressful time or maneuver, the parent often doesn’t have time to specifically choose a song for the occasion, the brain is just told to sing, and sing it does.

Recently my brain and I been going through a John Williams phase. I love John Williams’ music. If Beethoven or Bach or the Strauss boys were alive today they’d be scoring movies, too. Different songs come out of me at different times depending on the current parenting operation. When I have to flip her onto her stomach as part of a donning or doffing, the Superman theme comes out as she naturally resembles a flying prone human.
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In August every year, my adopted town of Colindres, Spain, holds a Sauga Folk music festival celebrating local and international folk music. We have missed it the previous three years because it almost always coincides with our annual migration south to Extremadura. This year, however, I was lucky enough to be able to attend.
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Lying in bed last night, I was attacked by an earworm. From out of no where, my brain started singing Mambo #5.

A little bit of Monica in my life … a little bit of Erica by my side …

I’m pretty ambivalent about that song. The catchy rhythm and goofiness of the lyrics balance each other out. But it did get me thinking back to exactly ten years ago, when that song got etched into my brain.

It was summer in Scandinavia as the second millennium was coming to a close… (more…)

My father emailed me back in February to tell me that he’d written a song for his friend, Tom’s, surprise sixtieth birthday party, and he needed some melody and rhythm help from me. I pulled out my guitar and recorded three videos, with three different chord patterns, invented on the spot, for him to choose from. He wrote back saying that, while they were all good, he liked the more bluesy rhythm best. He explained how many verses and instrumental interludes there should be, and I recorded a video, beginning with a “Hey Tom! Happy birthday!” message to try to fool people into thinking that I was being beamed in live over video conference. After I finished, I smiled and said goodbye. Three days later, at the party, my father downloaded the video to Tom’s computer, invited everyone at the party to gather around, and the three of us, me on guitar, my father on vocals and harmonica, and my mother on harmonizing vocals, performed the Old Man Blues for our dear friend, Tom. He loved it, of course.

One month ago today, my father turned sixty years old. He was visiting us at the time and he, my mother, and I performed the Old Man Blues, a song about getting old, for my grandmother, wife, and daughter. This time I recorded it. Keep in mind that we had never rehearsed together and I’d only played the song once three months earlier.
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Yesterday, I was just doing a simple google search for…hmm, I can’t remember…and I tripped and fell down the YouTube rabbit hole. Ninety minutes later, I emerged with some serious respect for this spidery-fingered asian kid named Sungha Jung. Just as an article I read the other day pointed out, this kind of stuff, not corporate produced television, is what YouTube is all about. Check out this kid.
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Yesterday morning, as I was changing and dressing Nora, I was whistling to her to calm her down, as I sometimes do. I was startled when Marga called from the next room, “Be careful with that song! We’re going to the Basque Country this weekend!” “What was I whistling?”, I asked. “That’s the Spanish national anthem,” she replied. Oops. I hadn’t realized at all what I was whistling.
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The mouth harp, also known as the Jew’s harp (despite having no connection to Jews) or jaw harp, is one of the weirdest musical instruments. How many instruments do you know of that depend on the vibrations of the musician’s skull to be heard? According to Wikipedia, the instrument dates back to at least the third century B.C., but the source they cite is just some guy’s blog, so who knows. My friend Dennis not only owns a mouth harp, but he knows how to play it! Here’s a video of a little jam session we had with my father, me, Dennis, and Merle on my trip to the States in February. I came up with a couple chords, strummed a rhythm, and Dennis – and his vibrating skull – matched the notes exactly. My celebration at the end is rather exuberant, but there was plenty of wine flowing and the performance really was quite awesome.
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