Music and telling the long story

Telling the long story, the story that moves through laughter love, grief, loss, change, faith,. connection, friends, spouses children and grandchildren, peace, war, home, and travel: that’s how we live our lives. Your story won’t sound exactly like mine; the threads we weave of our experiences will be of differing weight and color. There will be things in common, though, even if we do not have the same experiences or share the same views of what happens in our lives.

You might find a bit of a laugh in the wry twist of ending in the song Johnny Be fair, from Ireland, and a fine celebration of holidays in the American West in Two Step ‘round the Christmas Tree. You could join in the anthems of We Shall Overcome, Bandera del Sol, and We’ll Sing It All Over. You could have fun teaching your children Froggy Went a-Courting and Mother Will You Let Me Go to the Fair? There are thoughts about the relationships between parents and children in songs including I’ll Go Too and All the Ways You Wander, and if romantic love is what you’re wanting to talk of or listen to, there are buckets of songs on that, among them My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose, and, if you look at it that way, Aanachie Gordon and Bay of Biscay The long story as told in moments, from the immediate moment of a lively jig and a slow air, songs of faith within and without church doors. songs of hope and peace -- and connection. Music is a way for us to tell the long stories of our lives.


Music helps us tell and listen to these stories, to connect through the differences, to celebrate the connections and the threads that pull through.


Music to go along with these ideas
India to Indiana: Everything Is Everywhere from Carrie Newcomer
Eddi Reader, Emily Smith, Robert Burns
Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition

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