Finding a new song is like unwrapping a small gift. I constantly find myself gently removing the bow with the utmost care before aggressively tearing into the packaging. When I hear a song that is unlike those I have heard before, it plays over and over in my head for days or weeks on end. I have spent years now stockpiling these little gifts that I have encountered. I hoard old songs and impatiently gather new artists. Each unfamiliar genre I stumble across is later enveloped in velvet ribbon and stowed away in my mind where it is constantly unwrapped and repackaged again for a later date. But after years of this gathering and exploring, I have realized that gifts are meant to be shared.
So, here we are: at the beginning of what I believe will be a hopefully interesting, possibly odd, column. I can’t profess to know more than basic music theory, but I can promise my column will be ripe with the ramblings of a lifelong music-lover and shower-singer whose habitual humming, singing and lackluster rapping skills somehow make her qualified to write for the Daily.
I suppose the idea to do so was born while I was sitting in quarantine in August before my first year of college. Just as I realized I had forgotten my winter coat at home, I was certain that 2020 had already thrown enough proverbial dark matter at our proverbial fan … until I received an email from Tufts that mandated a “no singing” policy on campus as part of a cautionary COVID-19 procedure.
While I am no accomplished singer, I am a music addict with a passion for belting verses outside of my vocal range, and the bleak prospect of a year without that pastime made my heart sink. And then I realized that if I couldn’t subject my dorm mates to my singing, I could still subject the rest of the university to my music tastes by doing my second favorite thing: talking at length.
So, this column will be a new vehicle to share the beauty I find in music from every corner of the earth as a little gift to all of you in these times of uncertainty.
We’ll move through different genres, different centuries and different languages, focusing on the artists and songs I find to be particularly significant or just especially catchy. We’ll cover the cultural import of certain styles in order to emerge every week with a different type of music to explore, all while I walk a fine line between sharing my excitement with you and appearing as if I actually know anything about music history. This will be a learning experience for me, too.
With a year as chaotic as this one, I think we should all develop music tastes to match. So, while this introduction has served as little more than a baseline summary, I hope music excites you as much as it thrills me, and I can’t wait to talk about it more with you.
Until next week,
Maeve
