Notes From the Grid is a bi-weekly column about the Columbia County music scene written by Rob. It is featured every other Friday in the "On the Scene" supplement of the Hudson Register Star. See all »

October 17, 2011

Family Music Legacy and Memory

Most mornings Hugh Horner will open the case and pull out his guitar. Daughter Ruby will actually await her concert sometimes climbing into the the fleece lined case and bounce on her bottom while her father plays for her. This is Dad’s practice time and he takes it seriously, strumming new chords, attempting bass lines, trying to hear how his version of the chord progression resembles what Merle Haggard or Buddy Holly had in mind. Ruby is a lucky girl. In our constantly changing digital ethernetty society there aren’t as many experiences of home made music for our children as there were in the past. Hugh, who is the chef at Club Helsinki in Hudson, has created a situation where if he doesn’t practice his guitar each morning, he is disappointing Ruby, who in turn, as a a result of this sequence of events, will travel life with fond memories of these special times with her dad

In the past few columns we’ve been discussing the fear of judgment when making music, the logic of stage fright and the role of culture in music. Here in the modern United States of America we seem to honor and revere the professional over the casual musician, which is something that makes perfect sense, it takes a lot of study practice and hard work to become adept at an instrument. Skilled enough that someone will give adequate money sustain a tolerable comfortable living on on a fairly consistent basis. But the casual musician, someone like Hugh Horner, seems to be losing status.

The last column sang the praises of the Bangladesh community here in Hudson and how inclusive their   conception of musical experience is. The proprietor of a musical instrument store in Istanbul once told me - “Traditional music is for the family, classical music is for the conservatory and popular music is a good way for good musicians to have money.” I bring this up because I’ve been thinking about the role of music in a community whether it’s a neighborhood in a huge city or a small town (or a small city like Hudson).

I recently spent a week at a music festival in Calixa-Lavallee, Quebec, a town of just over 500 people about 45 minutes northeast of Montreal. The music was mostly traditional Quebecois and classical french and is attended by maybe 1000 people from the neighboring towns and the area around Montreal and students and teachers from as far away as France, Brazil, Scotland and Hudson NY. It is the town itself that puts on the festival along with some help from the Canadian government. Most of the population of this little village jump right in and and happily carry out mundane tasks like cooking food for the students and faculty. That right. The townspeople love having these musicians come each year and they try to make sure it’s a great experience for the participants. There was a home cooked dinner in the basement of the city hall and the meeting room of the building was laid out with air mattresses in case any of the students had trouble finding lodging and after the meal they sang to us.

A pleasant young man of 22 (a former resident of the town) sang a song he remembered his grandfather teaching him, a couple of middle-aged women offered a plaintive ballad, a fellow jumped up with what seemed to be a fairly bawdy ballad (my french is minimal at best) tame enough for the children to join in on the chorus. I asked one of the directors why the people would go to such trouble for us and she told me “They’re curious, they want to look at people from far away who like the same music they do.”

Okay, I’m finally getting to my point here. Music can be a lot of things: moving, annoying, profitable, the source of joy or the source of pain. It can define who we are, the way that the singers in that basement were defining themselves to us spectators. No one cared about the singer’s voice or whether they remembered the words accurately or if they stayed on key. The process was characterizing themselves and their culture, past and present. Here are some notes about this musical community I made during the week.

Everybody in this place just likes music a lot.

A nine year old girl’s face lights up when she recognizes a familiar song, scoots forward in her seat and begins to sing along, pumping her arms for emphasis. 

I was interested in realizing the competency of the average French-Canadian musician with a day job is so high and their repertoire, contemporary or not is usually very deep and always seems to relate to their perception of culture.

The performances spaces were all improvised - in a grange, a church, a meeting house and a cow barns.

There were a few policemen who volunteered to serve as security in order to gain free admission to the festival and a few times I saw them checking schedules and for interesting music and discussing the ethos of dancing while they worked.

I’m afraid that we musicians and non-musicians in Hudson are sometimes denying ourselves these very real pleasures by sitting our children with headsets or in front of a screen or even at a concert and defining music as a spectator sport rather than engaging their musical and other creative sensibilities as
an integral part of a fulfilling life. Which is why I am so encouraged by the musical populace of   Calixa-Lavallee and the parenting skills of people like Hugh Horner.

Interesting and unusual diversions in the near future

Sweet Soubrette returns to Hudson Sunday, October 9 to play once again at Musica.  http://www.goodmusica.com

Saturday, 10/15, Concrete Rivals and Liv Carrow at the Spotty Dog in Hudson   http://www.thespottydog.com