Music connects us all in spirit
by Waynonaha TwoWorlds
As the snow blows around my windows, I am now listening to some wonderful Scottish Christmas music, or is it Celtic, any way I just love the sound. Of course I equally love a good round dance at Pow Wow but then that is another story.
The fiddle is my old calling to the clan dance from both sides of my family, and we did enjoy a good old hoe down or barn dance. We gave new meaning to the words rattle the barn floor boards. No one can be sad when the fiddle, pipers and drummers play your feet just automatically start to dance. The sound of the music reaches in to the soul and stirs the embers of fires long thought cold.
I can remember many a winter night of stories and songs of the old land, as they chose to call it. There were mystical tails of haunting and other hair raising adventures that boggled the mind. Many of these were in the form of ballads or story songs; our
history was often kept by such songs and stories. In later years I was able to recall some history by remembering it in the ballads that we had sung as children. During a history test I was often caught singing under my breath by the teacher; but was only trying to come to the part that I needed in the ballad for the test.
What we lacked in musical instruments was made up from the kitchen with spoons and a wash tub. My mother played the harmonica or mouth organ and some times the Jews harp; we even resorted to blowing across the top of a bottle of jug. Most of the family played or sang but we all were a part of it no matter if we listened or tapped our feet. I was totally influenced by Shirley Temple so I got up and did my little jig dance I was very little at the time but loved to dance. Everyone thought it was a rendition of an Irish jig but in fact a cross from tap and just plain clog dancing.
What a band of wild ones we were but what happiness and laughter no matter how hard the times got, we just danced, sang, or played our way through.
After a while the adults got up to dance the reels and the jigs, as my uncle George called out the steps to the tune. 
It was great to watch, and we all tried to do the same but fell short. The fancy stepping was hard to master but being kids we thought we were really something. In later years my brother Jim and I did some dancing for the class talent show and took a ribbon. I still remember the dress and blouse that my mother made from my family tartan. My brother was not too thrilled with the kilt but did wear it after my Father explained to him that it was his heritage. Now he too plays the pipes and is asked to pipe for weddings and funerals, he also wears his kilt.
Strange how things come full circle. Now that I am older I can see my girls picking up the rope of their ancestors through the music. Long gone are the rock and roll, of the sixties and heavy metal music. The girls now seek out country, blue grass music and traditional Scottish and Irish.
I think that if we truly remember our roots and our connection to the Earth it will be in the form of music. Once I asked a group of people if we were all singing together could we actually hate or harm each other. The answer of course was NO.
Some day we will find the missing Cord that we lost along the way, and pick up the rope of our relations in love and harmony.
Love blessings Waynonaha
Copyright (c) 2006 by Waynonaha Two Worlds
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