Music at my house

My parents and stepparents loved music when I was growing up, more as spectators than participants.

My mom and stepfather had a lot cool stuff in their collective record and CD collection: Beatles, Motown, Paul Simon, Duke Ellington. They were into the idea of people playing musical instruments in an abstract way, but didn’t partake themselves. They were generally supportive of me and my sister’s efforts, without quite knowing how to involve themselves. Mom is more into musical instruments as decorative objects than functional ones, like the antique pump organ in the living room or the Mongolian horsehair fiddle hanging by the dining room table. Mom and Ralph keep an admirably open mind about new sounds, and have faithfully trooped out to hear us all play in some really avant-garde bands, for which, bless their hearts.

With my dad and stepmother the situation was more complicated. They had a lot of classical music recordings that they listened to regularly. They also kept a lot of musical instruments around the house, which they just about never touched. My dad in particular would have been a natural musician. He loved listening, his tastes ranged from Beethoven to Elvis, he was a natural mathematician and aesthete and had a vivid imagination. When I was a kid, I couldn’t figure out why he would have surrounded himself with musical instruments without wanting to use them.

Things with Dad and Giovanna were tense. They had a complicated relationship from the beginning and as Giovanna’s health deteriorated, it only got more complicated. Anna asked me recently if Dad and Giovanna ever danced. She might as well have asked me if they ever performed animal sacrifices by the light of the full moon. They came from non-dancing households and weren’t in the right emotional place to break with tradition.  As an adult I understand better, but it still makes me sad to think about it.

The centerpiece of Dad and Giovanna’s collection of unused instruments was a beautiful Yamaha digital keyboard with eighty-eight weighted keys, a variety of realistic-sounding patches and an assortment of rhythm loops. It could even walk bass if you played a note or chord. They had some introductory piano methods and approachable classical scores piled up on it, but only aspirationally. I don’t remember Dad or Giovanna so much as switching the keyboard on. When they weren’t around I’d play around with it. I even tried taping some wild synthesized generative freebop. The keyboard is the big one in the photo above. It’s an anchor of my home studio. It makes a great MIDI controller, and some of its built-in sounds are gorgeous.

Dad had an accordion that he did play a little bit. My sister’s fiancé has it now. Giovanna had a beautiful small Celtic harp. This was understood to be off-limits to anyone but her, but as with the piano, she never once touched it. Same with the dulcimer, which I claimed after they died. I tried some strumming around on it that sounded okay. The best results came from sampling it, slowing it down and reversing it.

After Dad died and we were going through his stuff we discovered Grandma’s alto sax. There’s a photo of her when she was young with the alto slung around her neck. This is not the humorless old lady who scolded us for taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m curious now to hear what kind of music she played on that saxophone. What kind of music did they like in South Dakota in the late Depression years? In addition to his billion classical CDs, Dad had one album by Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys. He never played it for us or mentioned it, we found it after he died. Who knows, maybe Grandma was playing western swing. I wish I could ask them about it.

Dad and Giovanna also kept us kids well-supplied with music toys. We had a series of little synthesizers, including the red Yamaha keytar so beloved by hipsters like the Autotune The News people and Brian on Family Guy. Seth McFarlane’s sense of humor is like what I imagine my dad’s unfiltered stream of consciousness might have looked like.

In my teen years Dad and I drifted further out of touch, but he continued to have a way of anticipating my interests. He gave me a cassette of Howlin’ Wolf in high school. In college he heard me talking about Miles Davis so he steered me into Gil Evans. He found me some live radio performances by the Duke Ellington Orchestra that doctors should be able to prescribe as mood elevators. I’m looking forward to playing Ellington for my kids. As we plan the family of our own, my hope is that we do more participating, less spectating.