My Musical Autobiography

I’m just a bit older than most of you, and I’ve managed to have many, many run-ins with non-Western Art music. I grew up in Texas, and my hometown of San Angelo had a sizable Mexican-American population, so we heard a lot of Mariachi music growing up. In fact, several years ago I was having dinner with my parents in a Mexican Food restaurant in Helen, Georgia (truly a deeply weird town if there ever was one—go check it out, if you haven’t already) when a Mariachi band started to play for the diners. They came over to our table and my mom asked them to play a specific tune, since it was my grandfather’s favorite—up until that moment, I had no idea he had liked that sort of music!

Another kind of music that was abundant in my home town was really old time Country Music—think Hank Williams Sr., not Jr. My uncle Al was a member of a group of older folks that got together once a week to eat potluck and sit around and make music. Many years ago I returned to San Angelo to play with my high school orchestra and got invited to one of the Country group’s sing-alongs. I had my oboe along with me, and they insisted that I get it out and play along. Some of those old tunes have trickier chord progressions than you might guess!

Perhaps my biggest experience in this field, though, was playing in a rock band in New York. We lived there for a year after finishing college, living near the very last stop on the A Train (yes, the one that you take “if you want to get to Harlem.”) There was an ad in one of the local papers wanting an oboist and a cellist for a newly-formed lo-fi band, and I called up the lead singer—she went by Ashley Wilkes, which couldn’t possibly have been her real name, but I never did find out what her real name was—and got the gig. We’d get together in our guitarist Artie’s apartment (he also worked as a taxi driver) and work through new songs—they’d strum and sing and I’d improvise a quasi-descant-back-up-singer-like- line along with them. We played in a lot of clubs in Manhattan, especially down in the Village, and at a few area colleges. I was simultaneously working in the music department of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (the really big one across the street from Rockefeller Center), which offered its own variety of music, especially when various Irish groups came over to play.

And then, of course, I’ve been teaching World Music since I was hired here at Converse almost twelve years ago. The first year I just taught two days of World Music within a different course (Introduction to Music Technology and Research, if you must know). Within a couple of years there was a World Music Component in Music History II, and finally the course you’re now taking was created and then required of all music majors. I’ve gotten to know music from all over the world through this course—not only the music from the cultures I’ve taught, but also the music from the cultures that the students have presented in class. It’s been a great ride, and one that I hope to stay on for a good long time to come.

I could go on about World Music I’ve Heard in My Favorite Restaurants or Cool Music Stores in Asheville or even Stuff Heard at the Spartanburg International Festival or World Music in Pop Music, but I’ve already hit 566 words in this Blog, and I want to leave stuff for all of you to write about!