Let’s Hear It for Music!!

 Music, what is it? Just random notes placed

On a scale diatonic, re arranged to suit taste?

Shakespeare’s “food of love” or Beethoven’s great art?

Reserved for the gifted, or for all to take part?

Whatever the origin, genre or string

It’s magic to hear your chosen instrument sing!

Be it plinkerty plonk, or silken of tone

It will be quite unique, a voice all of its own.

Take mine. Made of maple, intriguing to know

The humble, ubiquitous five stringed banjo.

Have you any idea how difficult the feat

To master the banjo and play Cripple Creek?

The dancing my fingers, the tapping my feet

The pounding of heart keeping time with the beat?

It only takes one note, just one note my friend

And I’m deep in the shit, at the start, not the end!

The hour upon hour of deep concentration

The week upon week of complete dedication.

The wrong notes, sore fingers, the ache in my back

The speed I can’t reach, the skill that I lack

Is conquered for this one cessation in time

When I hold the floor and the moment is mine.

And the music spills forth, with abandon and joy

For this is my love and, for this I employ

All my skill and my knowledge, dedication and time

Be it Folk, Irish, Bluegrass, this moment is mine.

So come guitars, come glockenspiels, spoons or sitar,

Come pipes and come piccolos, and djembies afar.

Come castanets, claves, and dumbecks and drums

And Bohrans and bongos and gourds just for fun.

Come fiddles and flutes, and bells and banjoes

And all things that sing and cause tapping of toes.

No matter the culture, no matter the sound

Let’s hear it for music wherever it found.

For whatever the country, whatever the law

When we make music together, we’re not making war.