Engleski A - 2021. jesen, reading 2.

Musical ability

When I was a boy in London in the 1970s, music was everywhere. We listened to the radio from morning till night, and could recite the Top Ten chart of pop singles on any day of the week. Our heroes were The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, Bob Dylan and many more. We knew the lyrics by heart, and some of us learned to play instruments, unfortunately not including me.

It wasn’t for want of trying. I was incessantly plonking, picking, strumming and banging on the various musical devices lying around at home. One brother played the guitar, another the piano and my sister sang in a choir. All of these activities were extra-curricular and had to be paid for, on top of school fees. When I asked my parents if I could take up an instrument, they wouldn’t mention the money, or my poor school record. They would always quote Mrs Mallory, the school music teacher: “That boy is tone deaf.”

Until I was a young adult I actually believed that I was tone deaf. In fact, I later found out, such a disability is very rare, like deafness itself. It was a professor at university who explained to me that the term was widely talked about by people who had no idea of its true meaning. A passionate music teacher himself, he added that many music teachers, while good musicians, attributed tone deafness to students’ laziness. And he also said that all sorts of notions, like the fact that tone deafness was inheritable, were to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Though I still doubted my music credentials, I was encouraged by the professor’s insights and began to believe that I might be able to get music after all. The summer after my finals I went to Spain, and a group of us went out for the night to a disco in Granada. The two sensations that year were Billy Jean by Michael Jackson and Let’s Dance by David Bowie. I danced like I never had before, and fell hopelessly in love with an American musician from El Paso. She told me I had a natural sense of rhythm. I knew she was right, and that Mrs Mallory was wrong.

Many years later I found myself back in London, married but unemployed, and trying to establish myself as a poet. One evening at a reading I met Brendan, a man who was greatly respected in the poetry world, and who was also an Irish musician. I had a soft spot for Irish music, how it made you dance, its haunting melodies, its passionate themes, but more than anything because my parents were Irish. Brendan and I became friends and he said I should take up the bodhrán, the Irish drum. London was full of bands without a drummer, he said, and you could make a few pounds while having a good time. My wife was sceptical. But I bought a drum, and he gave me a couple of lessons and some recordings I could use to learn to play. And learn I did.

Irish music is largely made up of jigs, reels and airs, and its simple tunes are listened to wherever a pint of Irish beer can be found, and way beyond the shores of Ireland. That’s what makes me so proud. The genre had been saved by those who had left Ireland for America during and after the Great Hunger. The efforts of the American Irish not only preserved a dying tradition, they also produced a sound which is recognisable throughout the modern world.