Two people have told me this week I should write a book. I think I would like to do that, however, instead I thought I’d share the two stories that lead these people to say this.
I was chatting with a new ukulele buddy Will, about how I don’t believe in natural talent. It’s my belief that people who show an early aptitude for something, generally is due to a positive experience at a young age. This was certainly true of me.
Some of my earliest memories are of my family being musical together when I was really small. My paternal grandmother played squeezebox, piano, organ and sang with no theoretical knowledge at all. She was amazing and did everything by ear. It went in her ears and came out of her hands. As a young woman, she would play the piano up the pub, and stand on the bar singing and playing squeezebox, and with the family, she brought us together with sing-songs. She was one of 14 siblings, and we would regularly get together as a family when I was small to be fed by Nanna and sing and play together.
I remember being perhaps 4 years old, and sitting under my Nanna’s piano with my brother, and little cousins, and all my great aunts and great uncles sitting round the room in a circle. Nanna would lead the singing and pass round a net bag of percussion – everyone had to take something, you couldn’t just sit there and not join in. (I used to do this at gigs – it took me years and years to put two and two together that this is where I learned this!). I used to watch her. She was the life and soul of the party and everyone followed her lead. The TV was off, and we were all just spending time together as a family, sharing time and music together. I loved these days – the food and the music alike – and so from a really young age, music meant family, happiness, togetherness and good times to my tender little heart.
Because I loved it, I played with singing and instruments before I was old enough to learn to worry about whether or not it was any good, so I just feel like I had a really strong connection with music being a warm yummy thing from a really young age. Because I loved it, I did it more, because I did it more, I developed an aptitude for it, and it became a comfort. There were many more things like that from other people in my early life, but these are some of my earliest memories. When I think about it, it’s like watching a documentary about the past, but I was there, snuck under the piano, taking it all in.
Those early experiences are so formative and I am so grateful for these. That’s why I have a squeezebox on my pencil pot that lives on my piano. That’s for Nanna, and the gift she helped give me.
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