My opinions on music are pretty well known. I'm humbled that there are others, who I believe are far more qualified, value my opinions. That said, allow me to share a bit of my scribbling about singing.
A dear friend, who is not only an amazing singer, but a leading academic authority on music and folklore, recently celebrated a birthday. I wrote this for her, and I'm sure she won't mind me sharing.
Music speaks — yet the human voice is its beating heart.
No crafted string nor tempered brass can reach where breath dares go.
The voice alone carries the warmth of blood, the ache of memory, the shiver of the living.
In a single note, it can reveal all that words conceal — desire, sorrow, forgiveness, the quiet confession of being.
One need not understand the tongue to understand the truth.
A cry of joy, a whisper of despair — both are fluent in the oldest language known to humankind.
For what is song but the pulse of emotion given shape?
What are lyrics but faint translations of the soul’s intent?
It is not the word, but the wail;
not the lyric, but the life within it,
that speaks to us in the dark.
When a voice rises, we follow —
not merely to listen, but to remember.
Within every trembling note lies the echo of all who have ever sung:
the mother to her child,
the lover calling through the rain,
the mourner bent above the grave.
Their breath has become our own; their music, our inheritance.
When the final tone fades —
when silence, patient and eternal, reclaims the air —
something of the singer remains.
Not the meaning.
Not the melody.
But the trembling memory of having been moved.
For though language dies, the voice endures.
It lingers where hearts still ache to be heard —
in the hush between two heartbeats,
in the echo that refuses to fade.
We have been moved.
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