The Ragamuffin Beat

The Silk Road Ensemble

It was evening, the sun still high in northern Iowa in July. I carried my littlest sister, Ann, in my arms as I danced in front of a reel-to-reel magnetic tape machine on which Dad had recorded the latest Hootenanny television show. My brother David may have been in the background, listening. Harry Belafonte’s liquid voice crooned sadly, “My heart is down, my head is turning around; I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town.”

I was trying to get Ann to sleep. Mother had gone back to school that summer, to prepare herself for a teaching credential. She came home on weekends, but during the week, as the oldest girl at home, I was responsible. I was 17 and about to go off to college. I am sure we all sat down to meals. My sisters came and went in the airy house at the edge of our small town, screen doors slamming. You could hear activity swirling through the house.

Summers were unstructured, a continuous flow of kids pursuing various games and interests. I didn’t worry much about David, already six. He played with the other younger kids. But Ann, not quite two, was never far from me. I had a friend with a tandem bike, who put a little seat for Ann on it, and we rode all over the near countryside.

We were a musical family with much delight in singing in church and in school choirs. The northern choral tradition was strong. We also listened to many musical variety shows on television. Hootenanny, when it arrived in 1963, was different. Folk music reflected my parents’ openness to a wide range of cultures. The first music I remember listening to on a scratchy 78 rpm record was of Josef Marais and Miranda’s South African folk songs. There must also have been classical music recordings, but the ones we enjoyed most, played over and over were the silly story songs.

My family’s ear was tuned to the beat of the world. Missionaries sometimes arrived from Africa, National Geographics never stopped coming and somehow, in the heart of midwestern America, we were interested in the exotic and far away. Not that Hootenanny was that exotic, but singers did bring in folk songs from Ireland, the Appalachians, gospel songs, calypso and story songs from all over. It didn’t last long, and I now know that because it banned Pete Seeger and the Weavers as too far to the left, it also lost some of the best singers of that era. Nevertheless, Dad recorded the series, and, on summer evenings in 1963, this was what Ann fell asleep to.

My parents were still trying to influence us away from the sexualized music of Elvis Presley and others like him. My mother didn’t have to forbid us anything. I felt her as powerful and she could make her values clear with the look on her face! Dad also voiced his views often. We didn’t need to wonder how they felt about culture!

There was soon a guitar in the house and some of us became better than others at playing and singing. My sisters collected notebooks full of chords and lyrics. We made fun of each other for listening to “top 40” tunes on AM radio, but as we reached certain ages, we all did. And, as we left home, peer influences took over. 

Though I played the piano somewhat, the guitar came too late for me. I fell back on reading and writing as my chief pursuits. But I have never been without inner music. The great singer-songwriters of my generation who fueled pop-rock still populate my inner rhythms, body moving in a “ragamuffin style.” I love blues, gospel, reggae, classic rock. Anything with a strong beat. 

And lyrics. Good lyrics get to me. They often surface in my thoughts in the voices in which I first heard them. Voices of great individuality come from deep within us. How do we manage to remember so many of them? They call up the whole person without any visual clues, another indication of how we are tuned to the world’s music.

“The great thing about music,” said Bob Marley, “is that when it hits you, you feel no pain.” I spent many years playing Marley (disturbing the neighbors) in the morning so I could dance off to work: “three little birds flit by my doorstep, … singing ‘don’t worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause every little thing’s gonna be all right.’”

At the best of times we can hear the beat of the world, the breath and life pulsing all around us. We find ourselves “rocking in the aisle to my inside song,” as Jackson Browne does when hears the beat of his lover’s heart “everywhere I go.” In this 1993 song, he lets it overwhelm him, taking him away. But when the beat of the world is within as well as around us, peace flows. We want nothing more.

Music helps, but we can hear the breath of the wind in the trees, the airplane flying overhead, people talking, dogs barking, orcas, surf breaking on the shore, far away music. The world calls to us and we rise to meet it. Auditory senses reach deep into us, opening us to a whole body response. This week a little girl was born in Yorkshire to my niece, singing her little song. So far away from me, but I heard it.

One of the great discussions of music by musicians from all over the world is The Music of Strangers, a documentary from 2016 about the Silk Road Ensemble put together by Yo-yo Ma. In addition to the spectacular performances, intimate views of the musicians from Syria, China, Galicia, and Iran are included. They constantly think  about why they do what they do, even in perilous circumstances. “In the intersections of cultures, new things emerge,” says one. I wish my globe-embracing parents were around to see this film.