Song

My mother sang to me, hummed and lullabyed. Brahm's, Rock-a-bye Baby. Together we sang "Downtown" (Yes, Petula Clark.) She would sing "Stay Awake" to me at bedtime, sarcasm learned in the cradle. I learned a lot of old songs, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, It's a Long Way to Tipperary, Clementine. We sang in the car, we sang together.

In church I loved the music most of all. Crown Him With Many Crowns, I joined the choir as soon as I was old enough, and stayed with it until I left the church entirely. It was such a solace to open my throat and sing out, and sit far away from my parents, often going to a different mass entirely. To be part of the procession with candles intoning 'Praise We Christ's Immortal Body" an old and wonderful chant, very moving. I would gradually become more and more uncomfortable with the imagery, the dogma of the songs. The masculinity of the words, the overwhelming paternal identity of God, my exclusion for being female. The music of it, wordless truth, remains.

Popular music filled my head, I sang along. I listened to the WNIC, soft hits all the time. I am the Eagle, Country Roads, Oh Very Young, John Denver, Cat Stevens. It's not that I didn't have taste, it is that I had little exposure to what I would like. On my few albums, I tended to find the one oddball song and memorize it. Polka-dots and Moonbeams, Forest Lawn. My brothers left behind records when they left home. Tommy- The Who I nearly memorized complete. I wound up a DJ at an automated country radio station in Kalkaska Michigan, trying to tolerate the country music. There were specks of gold amidst the dross- Emmylou Harris, Nancy Griffiths, Johnny Cash. Still hating Country in general, I learned a more expansive musical eclecticism. Mainstream radio stations were becoming more corporate, homogenized, I was for a brief moment part of the problem. I examined my conscience, my mindless swallowing of pop.

I'd always got drizzles of folk and international music. The folk dances in college played music from all over. I listened to more NPR. Jazz I tried and found it to be habañero pepper, good only in tiny amounts. The difference - knowing quality from crap, and my taste from just not-to-my- taste. I sought out the corners, and the old stuff, and began to loathe the pabulum.

Then, well, the pantheon became available. International Music, still not easy to find, but no longer impossible. Schicklele Mix, the web, All Songs Considered, BBC, a world of music leaked in around the edges. Paul Simon and his Rhythm of the Saints pushed, Buena Vista Social Club, Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? all ate away at the monolith. Not all good, but trying. More genuine, more unfucked with, hardy stuff, raw, real.

The crap, of course, is everywhere. Read Dave Barry's 'Bad Song Book.' At work when the Soft Rock station is on, I can't turn it off. Or a James Taylor CD is brought in- if I ever run into the man on the street, I will kick him in the shins. I fixate on the words to pop love, the dysfunctional sentiments, the anti-feminism. "She's gone/It'll be the devil to replace her/she's gone/what went wrong?"- well, duh. If I never hear another Jackson Browne song, it will be a good start. The soullessness of it, the commercial slickness, the endless repetition, how many times does anyone need to hear REO Speed-wagon, Hesuschristpullingaricksaw? I will leave stores playing Elton John on the Muzak. Mediocrity infuriates me, neither hot nor cold, I spit it out. With music it feels an obscenity, cheapening the sacred.

Although the mainstream will always be there, I am comforted by more side-streams flowing, oxbows forming, harmonies and dissonances overtones and undertones, more voices chiming in, and turning the music.

I am learning new songs. Harmonizing.