In my profession, I have a lot of time to listen to music. I have a large collection and varied mix of music that I have stored on my drive. I’ve decided that I like pretty much any kind of music as long as it has that extra something. It’s hard to define that extra something but it is clearly something that invokes some sort of emotional charge. I’ve been able to find this in all types of music except trance.
This morning, as the random gods would have it, I was engaged in a mini-mix of folk music predominantly sung by Roger Whittaker. I’m sure there are many of you who know who he is and was exposed to it by your parents when you were young. In fact, he may be one of the first musicians I can recall. My father had many vinyls full of Roger and would not only play it frequently on the turntable, but would often be singing or whistling (more often whistling) his tunes around the house. He was a proficient guitar player and would strum many of his tunes in public and at home.
It has dawned on me that the ultimate pleasure I derive from recorded music (live music is a different story) are the vivid memories that they invoke. Memories I didn’t realize I had but are recalled in detail by the listening of a song. With Roger Whittaker this morning it brought up many memories all dealing with my father. Honestly, quite a powerful experience. Yeah, Roger is an old-fashioned, very plain folk singer but becomes much more than that when there’s a personal history attached to the songs.
So, I started to think about other songs that bring up other memories and once I started listing them I realized there’s going to be hundreds. Some bring up very distinctive moments and others bring up general feelings like ‘this song reminds me of 1st year university’ which then peels back layers and layers of more memories. Quite powerful stuff! If somebody hasn’t done research on this phenomenon and possible medical usages like bringing people out of comas or through the cloud of amnesia….
Anyhow, for my personal enjoyment and interest sake, I’m going to start a living blog entry that lists songs/albums/band/singer and the memory invoked.