Why Music?

Composer Mozart

With music I feel at home. It was the one safe happy place when I was a child. When I played piano, the rest of  the world seemed to disappear and make sense. When I played piano and sang I felt connected to those positive things in life - the sunshine days, the happy memories.

 

I felt good about myself in a world that was often dark and full of despair it seemed. 

When my fingers learned to play Bach and Mozart a whole other dimension opened up, as if I was on some small way connected to those genius artists and transported to far away shores..

I travelled with folk artists and learned the shared joy of harmony singing and fiddlers rhythms. 

I've never looked back....   

Paul Simon said - when he was inspired by African skies and African rhythms, anti-apartheid forces shunned his musical collaborations for his amazing Graceland album (in 1986)

Yet now all these many years later perhaps the unison of Simon's American voice along with African voices helped to offer a unifying hope that anything was possible. That the voices of fear and hatred might be overcome by the melodies and rhythms that we all understand and that unite us.

Some of us suffer great insecurities, and more than anything we need those voices of hope. Simon's journey was about music not politics.  

Favourite Scottish Songs - Ye Banks and Braes (Robert Burns), Garden Valley (Dougie McLean) , Now Westlin Winds (Robert Burns)  

Paul Simon BLOG - http://www.musicfootnotes.com/paul-simon-clyde-auditorium-glasgow.html
Bob Dylan BLOG -  http://www.musicfootnotes.com/myjourneywithbobdylan.html