Posted October 25, 2011 08:26 PM
by Linda Ferro    

So, I was visiting my 91 year-old Mom the other day at her house. Just talking about random things on a magnificent, sparkly-clear October afternoon. We were sitting outside on her deck up in the hills of Kenwood, overlooking the gorgeous Sonoma Valley. I was telling her about a program on KRCB (TV 22) that I stumbled across the night before. It was an in-depth, up-close-and-personal feature show on the world-reknowned Spanish/Mexican tenor Placido Domingo (no, he wasn't Italian). So why was I watching this show? Why would a woman like me, who feels like she channels Janis Joplin, be so fascinated with a deceased opera singer?

Well I can say one thing for sure: I come from a very musically diverse family. My Dad was a band leader of a Swing band called "The Mello-Tones." He played Alto Sax in his band throughout all my growing-up years, until a brain tumor messed with his optic nerve and he couldn't read music anymore, or follow the charts, or eventually, keep going at all. (He also played clarinet in a Dixieland band.) My Mom was a soloist in her church. She had a beautiful rich, alto voice (no sopranos in our family), and used to sing in musicals and community choruses. I have a Classic Rock musician brother, a neice who plays French Horn for local college and community ensembles and orchestras, a son who played drums in an Alt Rock band....Well, you get the picture. Musical diversity.

...so I was visiting with my Mom, and I was telling her about the program I watched – the passion of this opera singer and how I remembered that Dad loved Verdi's opera Aida. I told her that there were English subtitles on the TV screen and that I was blown away by how emotional, and flowery and drippy with love the lyrics were; how this burly, bearded tenor sang – with powerful abandon – Italian words I never knew the meaning of. So there he was, this brave warrior in all his impressive battle gear singing, "Heavenly Aida, divine form / Mystical garland of light and flowers / You are queen of my thoughts." As I was telling my Mom about this, I got this bright idea: I pulled out my iPhone and told her that we could watch him sing right now on my phone screen. I showed her how I could push a little lit-up blue button and speak into my phone: "Placido Domingo singing Aida."  Then i showed her the list of choices to select. She said, "Dad's favorite was called Celeste Aida." I located a video of Domingo singing on stage, and we both just sat there under the Oak trees on that sunny October afternoon holding a little phone in front of us, watching a Spanish tenor sing an Italian opera – the two of us a generation apart. We could feel the passion and we recognized the indisputable power of music, and the glorious magic of a song.

***

I hope you'll practice musical tolerance. If you haven't done this, try truly listening to some form of music you say you don't like. Listen deeply for what it is that others spend millions of dollars a year on. (I learned about this when all the other moms around me were freaking out that their kids were listening to Rap. My daughter said she liked the complicated rhythms. I remember hearing the lyric, "...Colder than a polar bear's toenails..." in one of the songs she listened to, and I just HAD to appreciate it for the art and craft of the songwriting.)

...And even after deep listening, if you still don't like it, please know this doesn't mean that it isn't any good!.

Categories: Miscellaneous Musings