Living with the Covid-19 restrictions is making me (and I suspect many of us) more reflective. Our regular pattern of life, previously taken for granted, has altered. In this changing world music has turned out to be a firm anchor, often in unexpected situations.
Last week an ad appeared on our local community website from someone selling a banjo – no type specified and very reasonably priced. Always keen to investigate fretted instruments I rang to find out more. The seller was pleased to chat, and we ended up talking about music for over twenty minutes. No, I didn’t buy the banjo, which was a tenor and basically a beginner’s instrument, but its owner had just upgraded to a Gold Star and was into Irish music. The Dubliners and Barney McKenna (who we both rated) came into the discussion, leading on to the wider world of banjos and mandolins. We both enjoyed the conversation and effectively exchanged our life stories in music. After we rang off, I felt mentally refreshed and renewed. I was reminded of festivals over the years and of conversations, sometimes with complete strangers, infused with the enthusiasm we had for our music.
This was followed a few days later by the appearance on a radio talk show of a well-known orchestral double bass player, Chi-chi Nwanoku. Chi-chi is a wonderfully lively and inspiring person. I was particularly impressed that in her teenage years she had trained as a 100-metre sprinter and had hoped to qualify for the 1976 Olympics. However, she sustained a serious knee injury while playing football which put paid to her career as an athlete. However, Chi-chi was also a musician, and on her first day back at school after undergoing surgery on her knee she was approached by her music teacher, who thought she could have a career in music if she took up a particular very unpopular orchestral instrument! She was taken to see the double basses, which towered over her. The shortest girl in her sixth-form, Chi-chi said, “I’m five-foot-nothing, and they’ve got to be the biggest instruments in the orchestra.” However her teacher said the right thing: “Yes, but Chi-chi, when have you ever been put off by a challenge?” The rest is history (check Wikipedia!). Not only is Chi-chi Nwanoku an internationally renowned double bass player, but she is also a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and in 2015 she founded the Chineke! Orchestra, Europe’s first professional majority black and minority ethnic orchestra. For much more about this inspiring person I suggest Googling the BBC page “10 things we learned from Chi-chi Nwanoku’s Desert Island Discs”. At the top of the list is Chi-chi’s belief that we are all born musicians: she thinks anyone can learn to play an instrument, even those who don’t feel they have a natural musical talent. “If you’ve got any sense of co-ordination and movement, then there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t learn to do something physical,” she says. So we should all keep learning and practising!
Finally I’m most grateful to Bert Daniel for his Welcome Column three days ago, ‘By the Numbers’. I had been unaware of Steve Roud’s list, and my search for, and then in, Steve’s online database was in danger of disrupting my schedule to get this article to California Bluegrass in time! Music indeed creates circles. Steve Roud is a Brit whose database is hosted on the website of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in London. The VWML includes all the ballads of English and Scottish origin collected by the American music scholar Francis James Child. Cecil Sharp himself is known for his personal diaries in which he describes his collecting experiences in the Appalachian Mountains and these can also be viewed on the VWML website. It is a wonderful resource for everyone interested in the origins of American and British folk songs and I expect to be making much use of it in the future.
As you progress on your personal journey in music you experience moments of inspiration, clarity and understanding. Sometimes you don’t recognise at the time what is happening, but on reflection you realise that you have come a long way and that the enterprise is worth pursuing. At least, I have found it so and I hope you do too.
John Baldry
February 2021
