We have been singing for a couple of days now…

I am at home, enjoying the beautiful fresh spring air, and the beach, of course, and focussing on songs, songs and more songs…  we will be starting a new musical project in the near future, and I am collecting old folk songs and getting ready to write new ones… I have come home for this… this process has always been a collaboration with my mom…  I laugh and call her the executive producer of all my musical projects!  She is, too.  She is the supporter, encourager, and friend to me during this time of research.  And what is more, she is the one that I rely on to help me find the gems that we end up using.

My mom has an amazing memory… everyone who knows her knows that.  And she has a beautiful voice.   She has also hung on to her old, tattered song books that she brought with her from Aleppo when she moved to Canada.   And I have my song books, and songs books that others have let us borrow or have given to us as gifts…  one way that we discover songs is we go through each book, and mom sings song after song to me… until we stop at one that we like… and then we talk about it, the text, the music, when she learned it,  the story behind it…  and that song just might make our short list.  It is a beautiful process… I love sitting at her feet and listening to her sing and listening to her stories…  Armenian folk song after Armenian folk song…  sometimes, a song just comes to her… and she sings it to me, and I instantly fall in love with it, and we have to look it up in one of her books…  when she was visiting us, my husband watched this process and was amazed at mom’s ability to sing every single song in one of the song books… “She is incredible!”  he’d say… and yes, I agree fully.

She is incredible.  Her mother taught her to sing.  She has taught me to sing.  And now, as my Little One sits at our feet and watches me and mom make music, I am hopefully teaching my daughter to love music too.

Tags: Armenian folk songs, daughter, grandmother, mom, music, song books, songs