MUSIC

                                                           

I once saw the results of a poll that had been taken, as to which song was the most popular song, ever sung and recorded in America. The result was Judy Garlands signature song “Over the Rainbow.” As a kid growing up in the fifties, I remember my mother singing that song as she went about her daily chores. I went and watched the movie “Judy,” a while back and it took me back down that yellow brick road and back to that song.

Music is so subjective and we all have our favorites and we all have opinions as to what we like and dislike. I think I loved, “Over the Rainbow,” because the lyrics tell us a story of hope for a better world in a better time and what a ‘Beautiful world’ we live in. In fact, Louie Armstrong sang about that very thing. But In a world of have’s and have nots, hope is all some people have left and here is someone singing about it and in words you can readily understand.

As the years have gone by my music tastes have changed too but there is a point when I can no longer buy into what some call music today. I watched the super bowl half time show and as much as the choreography and dancing was good , the music was hard to judge because I understood little of what was sung. It was more noise then anything. I have gone to dances where the music literally drove me out with its loudness. Where the dancing seemed to be more reminiscent of people in trances. Where you no longer touch your partner, or hold them or talk to them, you just try to avoid some catastrophic collision that would leave you both on the floor.

Enough about that. Sometimes when I am troubled, I ask Alexa to play music from my era and it always cheers me up and sometimes tears me up. For so many of the songs bring back a memory, that was at least for me, from a different time and what I would call a better place. They will be singing “Somewhere over the rainbow” a hundred years from now. Much of today’s music will be forgotten. There are impersonators who are very popular, singing songs from the last half of the last century. I have resisted most of the urgings to get with it and try to find the good in todays music. Maybe I’m stubborn and maybe I’m spoiled and maybe I just know good music when I hear it.

When I was in my thirties and forties my wife and I would go to dances a lot. We too had pressures and a lot of worries and stress in our lives and at least for a few hours we needed to go and get away from it all.  It was the music that was the elixir and when the night was over, we rode home, her snuggled under my arm, just as we did a decade before when we were courting. It was a booster shot from the daily grind and it did us wonders.

I am probably in the last decade of my life but I’m at peace with that. It’s been a wonderful life and so much has happened that made me proud and happy. But when it’s all over, somewhere in that list of credits that will play at the end, will be the music that made me so happy and continues to warm my heart and soul. The pictures of all of those memories that develop in my mind when the music returns, could not be any clearer if they were in 5g and high definition. No, as Nat King Cole sang--- they are just “Unforgettable.”