Music Hath Charms...

Music hath charms…

When I was a junior in high school, one very enterprising class president managed to get a juke box installed in our cafeteria. In those days, this was a huge novelty. For a quarter, we could play our favorite tunes. 

During lunch, we’d chat while the music played in the background. But there was one song that stopped all our chatter:  California Girls by the Beach Boys. When the opening rhythm began, every kid in the room joined in. As the rhythm washed over us, we’d tap the beat on our tables. Competing harmonies blended in that unmistakable Beach Boys style as we sang along. We became one, no more cliques, classes, nerds or jocks. We were a choir, surfer dudes in landlocked Pennsylvania, swaying and singing together. 

Music has that power. It joins us together. When we sing, we have to stick together. We sing the same words at the same time and keep a measured beat. We harmonize. Our voices blend.

At baseball games, we stretch at the seventh inning and sing, Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Every football team has its fight song. Every country has an anthem lovingly belted out at sporting events and national ceremonies. Many have five or six verses known by citizens young and old.    

Political parties rally supporters with rousing theme songs. Supporters of John Adams, our second president, used the tune from a popular drinking song as an anthem for his re-election campaign. That same melody, later joined to a poem by Francis Scott Key, gave us our national anthem. 

We sing hymns as we raise our thoughts and souls to a higher power. The Civil rights organizers used spirituals to pull people together and change dividing laws peacefully.  

My husband and his friends lead sing-alongs in retirement homes. They bring their guitars, harmonicas, keyboards and tambourines and belt out the old time favorites.  Everyone sings. It’s amazing how many songs senior citizens know. Even those with failing memories pull the words from deep within. And boy do they have fun. Clapping and singing, smiling and laughing, they ask for just one more tune.

Remember those long car trips we used to take? Singing helped the time pass.  How many verses of Old MacDonald did it take to get from home to Grandma’s? Camp songs evoke lazy summer evenings spent roasting marshmallows over a fire. How many bottles of ‘pop’ were really on that wall?

Children love to sing. At school, we started every day with a song. Singing helped us focus. We left the cares of home behind as we joined together as a community of learners. We were many, yet we were one.

There was one other song that stopped us cold in that high school cafeteria long ago. It was a sappy love song sung by Dean Martin. We couldn’t imagine how it even got in our jukebox, being as cool as we were back then. But we always sang anyway.  Everybody loves somebody sometime…  

           

Sing with your children. Sing with your friends, your co-workers, your congregation, your ball team and your rivals. It doesn’t really matter if you know all the words nor have a good voice. Just sing. Be part of a community. 

Join in.