Music

Music is as important to me as air. My music taste runs a wide variety of artists and bands, from Sweet Honey in the Rock to Shawn Colvin and Lesley Gore. Most evenings, you can find me dancing to the radio into the late hours of night. That is, unless I'm attending Pep Band where I play crash cymbals or drum lessons where I am learning drum set.

There were many years where I fought my mother tooth and nail for signing me up for lessons, but now I'm finally apreciating them , especially since they have paid off in normal band during auditions. I'm no where near as good as our drum set player in Symphonic Band, but I'm improving every week.

If you haven't heard, in mid-March I got a drum set of my own. It's SILVER! It's such a relief to no longer be forced to practice on an "air set" that I am inspired to play more often.

If you haven't been exposed to Sweet Honey in the Rock, you have missed a really neat experience. Sweet Honey is an all women group of African Americans who sing very traditional type Afrucan folk songs, along with songs that were created in the South by slaves and songs that deal with more "current" issues such as segregation . At the moment, I'm only in possession of three of their tapes, but their music has had a great impact on me. For instance, "Young and Positive" off their I Got Shoes album, is a very motivating and realistic view of today's society, but the aspect that differs it from other such songs is that it promotes young people to change and spread a positive image everywhere they go, to every person they meet.

Oldies, as I have recently discovered, can be really accurate, especially as as far as pinpointing exact emotions. Of my limited experience, Lesley Gore is very good with her songs, "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me". These songs really give new meaning to the phrase "music and fashion follow patterns". The same songs my mother enjoyed as a sixteen-year-old student are just as appealing to me at the same age.

I just took a combination dance class over the winter and really enjoyed it. It involved Swing and Hip-Hop. I'm considering taking a full year of Hip-Hop as soon as school starts back up in September. Movement and music are tied together. To quote one of my songs, "The energy comes, the road starts to shake". That describes how I feel after a whole week of confining restricting school. I need to let some of the excess energy out, and a nice 5-minute intense dance does wonders...