Musical heritage

later. First we will talk about how I became to appreciate all types of music.

I don’t think anyone could possibly remember when they first heard music, and the same holds true for me.

Most likely we all heard music, and felt the rhythm while lavishly laying in our mothers’ womb.

So I will start from when I believe I became cognizant, around the age of four or five. Now this is just a guess, but I think I remember being this age and dancing to some soul music, like the Temptations or James brown. As far as I can remember this was my first era of music. And no one did it better than Mister James Brown, who later became known as the “Godfather of Soul”. It seemed this man put out a new hit every week. If you do not know soul, then you gots to get you some James Brown. The reigning queen at the time , and still hold the title today is Aretha Franklin, who became dubbed as the “Queen of Soul”. Listening to her is when I first associated the term “sweet soulful stylings”. Rock and Roll would come about later, and only soul and jazz was played in our house and around the black community. So I was very well acquainted with soul music. This is the music I danced to, and the music I lip synced to, the music I dreamed about performing on stage to thousands of adoring fans. This, as I can best recall was first my introduction to music.

Grade school, Jefferson elementary fourth grade. This would begin to open up a whole new world of music for me. I remember one early morning, an assembly in the gym. It was about students who would like to join the music program. I thought “whoa” how cool it would be to learn how to play an instrument. Maybe the saxophone or the trumpet. I immediately signed up, and they gave us a permission slip to take home to our parents, I don’t think I could have been more excited. I gave the slip to my mother and eagerly awaited her signature so I could rush it back to school.

Our introduction to music at Jefferson elementary began with a hearing test and some type of a music aptitude test. I don’t recall exactly what the test consisted of, but I remember it being unusual, and whatever it was I passed.

They gave me some big funny looking instrument. It was long and shiny, I was hoping for a