MOJAVE MULESKINNERS

I reckon no one knows the actual origin of music? I surely don’t. But it came to me early in life and has remained with me since. I recall in my early years those with the ability to play a musical instrument were well known in the rural communities. Fiddle’s, piano’s guitar’s, harmonica’s, organ’s, banjo’s, concertina’s, accordion’s, dulcimer’s, all came alive in the hands of certain people to weave music from long ago as well as current renditions, ballads, waltzes, hoe-downs, and even the classics. Although if I admitted I liked the classics as a boy, I received glances of suspicion simply because it was considered ‘log hair’ music.

 

But to me, music is the only man made conception that truly touches the soul and spirit of mankind. In church, the strains of Amazing Grace, inspire me to stand up and holler out that old Scottish hymn to the top of my aging voice. I set beside the Boulevard as a marching band plays the Battle Cry Of Freedom, and I stand a little straighter and blink back a tear of what I reckon must be pride. I lean on someone’s old piano while When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, is being played and just can’t help adding my off-key influence to it. I tap my foot with the gusto of a hound dog when Fire On the Mountain or Foggy Mountain Breakdown, is being rendered by a good country string band, and I fly in my mind like an eagle when Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyrie is being pounded out by the Boston Symphony. But mostly, I think, music paints pictures for me and takes me back again and again to events and places across the ages, and causes me to remember the good times, the bad times, the sad and the happy times and guides my thoughts to places I haven’t visited lately.

 

I see the faces of old friends in the woven notes of music, the willow lined banks of rivers I’ve known, locomotives belching black smoke from their stacks, old dogs, good horses, and girls in bright ribbons carrying their shoes along soft sandy roads. Music is often my enthusiasm, my inspiration and motivation.

 

Africans gave it a beat, Italians first wrote it, German’s lifted it to great heights. But it has been the lone individual who has carried it in the soul and sang and played it from the heart through the years that has touched us and remained in our memories. Ancient mariners, soldiers, plowmen, shepherds, cowboys, and John Phillip Sousa, have left us with much of what we sing, play and dance to. No doubt I am a product of the twentieth century, and I have yet to grasp much of the values of this new era nor understand it. Some of what is deemed music today, merely evokes anger in me. I think perhaps it is meant to be that way? For life is indeed stimulated by constant change. But I hope that the young look back and listen now and then to the words and music of our past, for in them lays the intricate history of every nation’s people. And no matter how you view music, it is always an inexplicable amazing grace, and one of the few we carry with us always.

 

~ Weakeyes Cody