MARGE, I LOVE CHILDREN, they’re wonderful and I find their company real excitin’. You know how they are always askin’ a million and one questions which on first thought can sometimes seem silly but if you look into them questions a little while they make real sense.
Where I worked today, there was a little boy about five years old and he was such a bright-eyed inquirin’ little fellow that it was a pure joy to be around him and it was all I could do to keep doin’ my work and not stop and play with him all afternoon.
One time he asked his mother a question when she was listenin’ to the radio music. “Mama,” he says, “where did music come from?” And she answered him in a kinda off-hand way. “Oh, men invented different kinds of musical instruments and kept improvin’ them until we got pianos and harps and all kinds of horns and drums.” He shook his head and said, “I don’t mean that, I mean where did the music come from before it came out of horns and pianos.”
She looked at him kind of dumb-struck and then said, “I guess it came out of men’s hearts and minds because it was somethin’ they were thinkin’.” Well, Frankie looked at her a minute and then shook his head again. “I mean, where did it come from before it was in men’s hearts and minds?”
Marge, he really had her then because she just shrugged her shoulders and said, “Frankie, you can ask the craziest questions!” But he wasn’t studyin’ about lettin’ her off so easy. “Mama, I want to know!” Well, she laughed a little then and said, “Ask Mildred!” And so he did.
Now, you know, Marge, I don’t believe in lettin’ the little ones down and whether I know somethin’ or not I will always try to give them at least my own thoughts on the matter so I explained to him: “Frankie, I don’t rightly know that I can give you the last-word facts about it, but I can tell you what I think if you’d like to hear that.” He sat down on the hassock-cushion and his big eyes was all eager. “Yes,” he says, “tell me that.”
“Well,” I says, “there has always been music as long as there has been a world, been out there floatin’ around long before it went into man’s heart and mind, no two ways about it. At first man was so busy tryin’ to learn how to build a fire and find food to eat that he didn’t have time to hear the music, but it was there just the same.”
Marge, have you ever noticed how little children can hang on each and every word you say just like the greatest thing they’ve ever heard? Well, that’s how Frankie was lookin’ at me. I always pause a bit in the story in order to make it more excitin’ and make them help me along with it. “Where was it?” he asked, “where was it when they didn’t know about it?”
“Well,” I says, “it was all around them and it just kept on goin’ about its music-business until they began to notice it. One night after supper, man and his wife and child were sittin’ in front of the fire feelin’ nice and comfortable when they noticed a sound. They listened a bit and then they heard it again!”
“What was it!” Frankie hollered. “It was the fire cracklin’ and poppin’,” I said, “and after they listened a while they heard somethin’ way up over their heads goin’ boom-boom-boomity-boom! And what do you think it was?”
Marge, what do you think he said it was? “A bomb!” “No,” says I, “it was thunder and after a while the lightnin’ went clackity-clack! And then the rain began to fall … plup, plup, plup and when it hit man’s fire, the hot wood made a sound like cu-zizzzzz before it went out and sometimes musicians make that sound on the brass cymbals when they hit them together real fast.”
I had me a real audience by this time because Frankie’s mother turned down the radio so’s she could listen, too.
“Since there was no television in those days, man and his family had a lot of fun listenin’ to the different sounds they would hear like the buzzin’ of bees, the wind in the trees, the cry of animals in the night goin’ ah-wooooooo, ah-wooooooo. In the daytime they heard the waves slappin’ up against the beach and sayin’ cu-swush, cu-swush, and they heard the birds trillin’ in the trees and they also found that when they listened to the little babies they’d hear musical, gurglin’ sounds like ah-ga-gerrr-taaaaah.”
“That’s what baby sister says,” shouted Frankie. “Yes,” I said, “and one day when man was hittin’ one stone against the other, it pleased him to hear the rocks makin’ a ringin noise like tooooonnnnng. And music began to enter the heart of man. He listened to everything, and he found that there was music all around him. It was in his own breathin’ which was all timed out nice and even; it was in his heart-beat which went ku-dum, ku-dum all the time; it came out of the animals’ hoofs as they ran, across the stones tic-toc, tic-toc, tic-toc; it was in the brook-water, goin’ curga-la-la, rerrrr-curga-la-la; it was everywhere; It was in man’s throat.”
Frankie let out a nice high note, and I said, “That’s right, just like that! One day man stood down in a valley and hollered up to the tops of the mountain, la-la-deeeeee! and the sound came rocketin’ back, laaaa-laaaa-deeeeeeee! and man was so happy he began to sing!”
Frankie then gave us a line or two of “Yankee Doodle.” “But,” I said, “man got weary of waitin’ around for the sounds to happen because he wanted to hear them whenever he felt like it, and he also wanted to hear them in a different order. Sometimes it got on his nerves to hear the raindrops first and then the birds and then something else ’cause he had a notion that if he could arrange them in a different order, they would sound better, so he went to work to make all those sounds himself. At first he whistled them out, but he couldn’t get close enough to the real sounds so he began to hit sticks against one another and blow through animal horns and hit metal pieces together and things like that. And before you knew it he had some musical instruments to play on.”
“Hot dog!” Frankie says, “like drums and things!” I waited until the little fellow was all charged up with curiosity again and then I went on, “But it just so happened that every man couldn’t play the music although they all liked to hear it, so some played for others and they practiced together and got to be bands. Some of the band people played some real pretty things but other bands couldn’t because the man that made up the pretty piece couldn’t come and see them to tell them how to play it. So man racked his brain until he found a way to put dots down on paper so that other bands could look at it and know how the pieces should be played. My goodness, but they had a good time then and kept real busy writin’ down pieces and sendin’ them back and forth to each other and playin’ some of everything there was to play, because as you know, these bands were all over the world and naturally they was playin’ all kinds of different ways!”
“How could they read it if everybody spoke different?” asked Frankie. “Well,” I says, “they did somethin’ with music that they never did with no other language, they made only one set of writin’ so that every blessed musician can understand the other if he takes a little time to do it.”
“Well,” says Frankie, “now we only hear music when the band plays it.” “No, no,” I says, “it’s still everywhere, and if you will listen close you can hear it right in this room.” We got real quiet, and after a bit he says, “I hear the radiator goin’ ta-sisssss, and I hear the clock goin’ pip-pip-pip-pip.” “That’s right,” I says, “and now if you will place both of your hands tight over your ears and lift ’em up and put ’em back real fast, you will hear the music of life real clear.”
He did as I told him and then his face lit up real bright. “I hear it, I hear it!” “Of course you do,” I said, “and whenever you hear the music band you must learn to listen real close and that way you will find out what’s in the music and sometimes it won’t be birds or thunder or water, but it might be just a feelin’ you had about somethin’ once, maybe a scary feelin’ or a happy feelin’. Listen long and careful and you’ll be sure to hear it.”
Well, that child was so delighted and pleased, “Tell me another story about somethin’!” he says, and his mother adds, “Yes, do tell us another story.”
Of course, I did, Marge, ’cause not only was I enjoyin’ myself but it was a good way to get out of an afternoon’s ironin’.