by Josh Hoover, Fenton, MI

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s I think I had the impression that music went right from my dad’s classical music to my mom’s Rock and Roll from the 50’s and 60’s. I had no concept of the origins of Rock or the things never played by the stations that I listened to.

Then I met in college some people who between them played guitar, banjo, mandolin, auto harp, and a real honest to goodness washtub bass. They opened up to me the world of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and further back to the early blues, and Appalachian music brought to life today by the likes of John McCutcheon. I remember sitting around a fire and singing Ledbetter’s “Irene Goodnight,” Seeger’s “All Mixed Up,” Goober Peas and Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice,” and fully internalising the fact that music is eternal, that genres are artificial. No one is a musician by themselves they lean on those before them and share with those who come after them.

Now I sing new and old kids’ songs with my children, choose ancient hymns for church services, pull out my own guitar to play folk classics, and have parts of more than 600 years of music in my collection. I give thanks for the gift of music and the chance to thrill in all that has gone before.