A Brief Interlude into my Personal Music Background

Rachel Agan
Professor Lee Anna Rasar
MUSI 111.001
10/14/14
Mid-Term Exam: My Folk Music
All my life, I have grown up surrounded by people with a love for music, who enjoy sharing those interests with me. That in itself is the essence of what "folk music" is. Despite coming from a family that is not overly musical in a technical sense, the chance that I would end up having such a passion for pursuing a musical career is merely something that happened on its own. I was raised with lots of encouragement to approach music in a very joyful and naturalistic way. Such a wide range of music genres have been a part of my life, from classical music, electronic funk, sludge metal, contemporary worship, to jazz fusion. Narrowing down what to focus on in regards to this project was seriously challenging for me. I had to spend a lot of time contemplating over what musical roots my parents have honed in on consistently, and out of those, what I have been exposed to the most. My parents grew up surrounded in the ever-changing American culture of the '70s, and many of the music artists from then still hold significant meaningfulness to my parents. Having consistently been around them for two decades, it's really no wonder why I would consider my personal folk music to be aligned with theirs.
Picture a middle-class income family in an average house on an average street in a suburban city a half an hour away from the Twin Cities. A loving mother and a wise father, two feisty, adventurous boys and a creative, independent girl. The children were homeschooled for the majority of their elementary school and half of middle school year, due to the confusion and seeming lack of necessity to be involved with the public school system in their area. When the children were not learning with their parents or working on assignments independently, almost constant contact with their stay-at-home mother was extremely typical, as was the incorporation of music into various daily activities. I have such fond memories of this home that to think I will never go back to living in this same setting again is extremely bittersweet for me. Yet, I have adopted the same way of incorporating music into my current daily life as a college student. Because of the memories of my childhood and the folk music I associate with it, I feel a reassurance that I will never lose touch with who I am.
I would hear my mother singing along with Carole King or Jackson Browne while doing the dishes, and I would ask her what it was about the music that she loved so much. When we would go on trips to see my grandparents in Iowa, my father would always pick a handful of albums to listen to on the way down. Several of the artists that come to mind are James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jim Croce, Crosby Stills and Nash, Paul Simon, Gordon Lightfoot, Bonnie Raitt, and a few country crossovers including Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. It's strange that so many popular songs by these artists invoke such nostalgia in me when I was clearly not alive when these songs were making their first début in American music. Every time I hear "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, I want to get up and dance like I used to when I was a little girl. That odd mixture of sweet sadness that hits me when I hear Jim Croce tunes such as "Operator" or "Time in a Bottle" were infused into my essence at a young age as well. What is interesting to me is that I could not actually name any of these artists until I was at least in high school, but deep down I have known how these songs go all my life. I accidentally learned a Carole King song by ear on the piano back in my piano lesson days, without even knowing who she was exactly or what the words were other than "So Far Away". I just knew that it was one of many songs that was part of my family heroism, and I harbored such intense feeling for the music then, as I do now.
The first musical example I intend to share with the class on Tuesday is "Sweet Baby James", originally written and performed by James Taylor. This song has a very significant meaning for me, as it was played so often following the birth of my oldest little brother, James. When I was four years old, James Phillip Agan was born six weeks early in the bitter-cold month of February. He was hospitalized for weeks before I finally saw him. I was told that this song was played repeatedly for my mother while she was giving birth, and afterwards during her and James' recovery. Thankfully, everything turned out for the best and James is now a very healthy and happy sixteen year old. James and Sean, my littlest brother of thirteen, and I are still very close. In my mind, the song "Sweet Baby James" not only reminds me of this healing process my mother and brother endured, but it also reminds me of how blessed I am to have two brothers who care about me and love me, and share the same culture as me, musically and otherwise. That being said, we still fight a lot when we're all together, but this song makes me miss them both.
In recent years, I have experimented with listening to an eclectic range of music genres and adopting elements from those that amaze and astound me, of maybe some that I can personally identify with, to incorporate into my own musical endeavors. When I bought my first iPod and became engrossed in the age of the internet, that's when my musical horizons became truly broadened. All kinds of music from foreign cultures, some that I had never known existed before, were suddenly available with a few clicks on YouTube. Ultimately, my music library nowadays is densely populated with jazz and metal, and everything in between. Still, I hold on to a lot of my folk music roots by appreciating the music I grew up listening to for what it is. I did not abandon the folk music of my heritage, but merely extended my tastes to include a more modernized, diversified flair. By combining so many stylistic elements in my own playing, I have allowed myself to become a better musician as well, with an unquenchable curiosity for exploring music from all parts of the globe. For example, when we were learning about polka music in class, I went home and attempted to find any polka jazz metal fusion groups, and I found just the sort from Vienna, Austria called Russkaja, whom identify themselves genre-wise as "Russian Turbo Polka". There are all kinds of unique genre mashups out there that I have grown to love from my extensive searches. A few fellow music enthusiasts and I enjoy going back and forth between each other in sharing our discoveries and how it relates to our own personal roots. In my opinion, this is fundamental to being a folk musician.
To this day, when I listen to the music of my parents, the first and foremost in my own personal music background, I cannot help but grow nostalgic. It feels natural for me to miss my parents and my brothers, and miss the life I once lived as a child. I do not think I really appreciated all that I had to be thankful for, to be young and free from big decision and the burdens of growing up. This is what my folk music signifies for me, and it is important to me still that it gives me great pride to look back and think about how far I have come musically in the world, up to this moment.
Sources:
"Sweet Baby James" written and performed by James Taylor, taken from his second album "Sweet Baby James", track #1, side #1. Excerpt performed in class by Rachel Agan.
"Integral Birth" written and performed by Cynic, taken from their second album "Traced In Air", track #4, side #1. Arrangement performed in class by Rachel Agan.