Update>
My piece
I grew up believing
that whenever you hear music you must dance, well except in church of course,
as I was a Methodist. Even now, I can’t help to bob my head or click my fingers
when I hear music. I find it strange when I see people in concert sitting and
listening, it goes against my core.
Music
from America, England, the Caribbean and my birthplace Sierra Leone, was all
around me after I was born in the late 70s. Then, I was surrounded by teenagers,
their music, (the popular music of that time and the decade before) I learned
from them learned by osmosis. So many
time when I hear songs from the 70s that sounds familiar, I would get an image
of me as a child dancing to the music coming from an uncle’s room or of me
refusing to go to sleep and staying up late at an aunts 21st
birthday party or of Saturday mornings dancing with the adults to the music on
the radio.
By the
early 80s the teenagers were gone and so were ‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Hawaii Five O’
and Sesame street, but thanks to vacationers and VHS tapes, music videos and programs such the UK’s ‘Top of the Pops’ made it way to my
part of the world. Some of my cousins and I use to spend hours singing and
dancing imitating singers like Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, and Neneh
Cherry. It was during one of this video watch sessions that one of my cousin
and I promised each other never to fall in love with a singer or pretend a
singer was our boyfriend, we even pinky swore because of the shocking thing we
had just witnessed; her sister and an older cousin of ours (who were teenagers)
holding pillows, singing and pretending the pillows were their pop star
boyfriends. I am proud to say we remained
true to our words, though we do give credit, were credit is due to the “cute”
and “hot” ones. It was one of the pillow
hugging cousins that told me once during a dance off she organized that I dance
like an American, to which I responded, great, I do plan on going to University
in America.
My
brother and I moved to the US in the early 90’s to join our mom in Maryland and
as I learned about everything America, I became fascinated with Country music,
the singer song writer, television, Broadway musicals and old movies. Along with MTV and VH1, I would watch The
Nashville Network (TNN). My favorite show
on TNN was Crook and Chase. I enjoyed
watching them interview country singers as I loved hearing the stories behind
the country songs, which helped satisfy my curiosity about people and life. I spent most of my allowance buying Country
music from Columbia house. I loved
turning on the radio to sing and dance pop and R and B songs and playing my CD’s
to sing along and bob my head. Also
through television, I learned about Shirley Temple and I would watch her movies
on AMC every Sunday Morning. I also watched
The Patty Duke Show, Mr. Ed and I love Lucy daily.
At times a song will bring up a sad memory and
would stop listening, now I that am older I can finally get through songs that
does that to me. For a long time I could not bear hearing “Right here waiting
for you” by Richard Marx, and Bob Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as it takes
me back to the day I left Sierra Leone. On
that day some of my cousins were singing those songs to me, teasing me because I
was leaving behind a boyfriend, my first love. At other times, music has been
my noise barrier noise out at home and at work.
I could not afford to go to college after high school and the weekend I
was scheduled to leave for college, I spent all day in my room with my Columbia
House CDs, those were only things I wanted in my space.
The day
we came to the America, as we drove through the bad part of D.C, I thought to
myself, “If this is America, I want to go back. I made a mistake; I do not want
to live in this Country”. Now twenty
years later, every time I visit I admire the condos that have occupied the area
and I don’t see myself moving back to Sierra Leone. In Maryland there was and still is a huge
Sierra Leone community and though I was shy and lucky to go to a high school
with some old Sierra Leonean schoolmate I was eager to get to interact with
American Kids but go the shock of the century, self-imposed segregation, the
only diverse group were the foreign students. It was as if the different races and was
forbidden to speak with each other. I
did not want any part of this and I did speak to whomever when I felt like it
but the only High School function I went to was my senior prom. I did love most my America teachers better
than I did the ones in Sierra Leone, as they were more caring and exhibited a
passion for teaching that I admired.
When I
finally made it to college in the late 90s in Michigan, along with listening
variety radio stations I watching the music video countdown shows on BET, VH1and
MTV. TRL with Carson Daly was my friends and my favorite music show, until the
Carson Daly left. On day one of these friends asked me when we should stop
watching TRL as the TV audience was become younger than as, I replied “when the host is younger than us”; Carson
Daly’s last day was the last day I watched TRL.
Being born with the gift to
withstand chaos, I was able to handle the people in college who seemed repulsed
by me and my accent and the ones who yelled “coming to America” as me and other
foreign students would walk by, all I felt was sadness for them and as time
goes people, they all learned to leave me alone as they did get the reaction
they wanted from me. Through all this
and still shy my finesse of being able to get along with people of diverse
background helped me make friends at work and at school. It was then that I attended
what I refer to as my first “real” Thanksgiving, at the home of an American
friend.
Through
the Americas that I met during and after college I got to do a lot of things I
did not do when I was in Sierra Leone and when I first arrived, such as eating apple
pie with Ice-cream, roasting marshmallows for smores and attending barbeques on
holidays. My American friends then and
even now try to let me experience their America. For instance, when I was in
graduate school in New York State, friends from the church choir bought me a
pumpkin when they found out that I had never carved a pumpkin. They still make
fun of me for wearing a glove when taking the seeds out.
In 2001,
I moved to upstate New York for graduate school. September 11 was the day I was to teach my
first Chemistry lab class. At 8:45 I board the bus to school, 20minutes later
as I nervously prepared the lab for the students, someone came in and told me
to turn on the T.V. The next day the grand aunt whose house I danced with my
cousins, died and because the phone lines were down and planes were grounded,
it was days before I could speak with my cousins to offer my condolences and
days before they could leave from the U.K to attend her funeral.
After
2003 I spent most of my free time (which I did not have a lot off) reading for
work and pleasure so television and music took a back seat and again much of
what was being covered by the media and played on the radio did not appeal to
me; now my mood dictates what I listen to, watch and read. I do not have one artist or one type of music
that I can say has influence me the most, many have come along on trips,
dance-a-thons and memory walks. The top two
artists on my IPod today are Alanis Morissette and Rosanne Cash; I love them
because I love their minds and their values.
As I read “An American Story” by
Ethan Russell and write this piece I realized that events that I have happened
during my lifetime and those that I have read about of the past has been a
mirror for me, they’ve helped my define my values, and beliefs as well as given my courage to stay true to myself.
Some of the song that popped in my head as I read ‘Ethan
Russell’s America Story and thing about music are
“All I have to do is Dream” by Everly Brothers
“Red Red Wine” by UB40
“Like a Prayer” by Madonna
“Thriller” by Michael Jackson
“Save the Best for Last” by Vanessa Williams
“The Song Remembers When” by Trisha Yearwood
“Together Again” by Janet Jackson
“Western Wall” by Rosanne Cash
“It is my life” by Bonjovi
“Everything” by Alanis Morissette
