Life can be funny sometimes.
As I may or may not have had occasion to mention in this forum before, I do not have a musical bone in my body. As proof take for example the fact that the sum total of all my instrument playing experience can be counted by the two weeks I once spent playing the flute in fifth grade. I can't whistle. How they expected me to purse my lips similarly to get sound out of that darn instrument, I'll never know.
Still not convinced?
In high school my choir teacher pulled me aside one day to tell me that though I'd been singing the lower alto part, I should really be a soprano. Apparently I'd been feigning a low voice all these years. For those of you that have ever heard me speak. You've been duped. I don't really talk like that. My voice, according to my teacher, is really much higher.
Oh, and then there's the fact that although my mother knows words to nursery rhymes not even the authors remember, I cannot for the life of me manage to even hum a single one. It's a fact that confounds her to this day.
But, here comes the funny part. I married a band director. Not only can he play any instrument. He can sing, carry a tune even. All talents that have eluded me for 26 years.
Music, though, is one of the things that brought us together. And, by that I'm not referring to the fact that we met while I was interviewing two of his band students. No, I mean our love of music is something we have in common. We both love all kinds of music from jazz to big band to country to alternative and beyond.
Like the people I spoke with at Marion's Downtown Getdown Thursday night, we're not super picky about the genre. It just has to be good music. My husband's standards are obviously higher than mine. He can hear nuances to song that I'll never ever hear. I am learning. But, I've gotten used to the fact that I'll never carry a tune.