Yesterday, I was just sitting around when out of the blue, I was bombarded with an array of southern gospel songs, suddenly stuck in my head. All day long I have been listening to a southern gospel playlist, which takes me back to my early childhood. My parents took me to so many gospel concerts, and I didn't even hear non-gospel music until I was a teenager. Thinking on this form of Christian music and what it meant to my development, I contemplated my musical journey today while on my daily run. Music is such a huge part of who I am--how did it become this big of a factor?
According to my parents, when I was a baby, I would dance and just be so happy whenever 'Baby Baby' by Amy Grant would come on. I guess that was my first musical impact. When I was old enough to learn words and sing, most kids were learning 'Jesus Loves Me' and 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. The first song I remember learning was "Love Lifted Me", page 448 in the hymnal. There's pictures of my parents singing at Victory (the church we were at when I was two-ish), my dad holding me up so I could sing, too! Victory became Johnson Road Baptist, where I learned VBS songs that still get stuck in my head under my Mom's music teaching and where I sang "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" at a tent revival after learning it in private school. When I was three or so, my Dad had a cherry red el camino. He would take me for rides and we would listen to 'Shine' by Collective Soul and the song that goes 'Time has come today....TIME.' (it was my job to scream the loud TIME at the end of every line :) The extended family touched me with music as well. There is a very strong memory in my mind of my Grandma standing at her sink in Hartshorne and singing "The Old Rugged Cross". The whole family surrounded me with hymns. When I was four, my family moved to Sunray Baptist, where I spent all my life until college. During this time, a man we had known from our old church offered to sell us his late wife's piano. My Meemaw wanted me to learn music, so she bought the piano and put it in our house. I started taking piano lessons just as my parents discovered southern gospel music. I'm pretty sure we went to every gospel singing in the state of Oklahoma from the time I was 4ish until I was 12, at least. I've met (and taken pictures, minnie mouse doll included) with some of the greatest influences in the world of gospel music (Phil Cross/Poet Voices, Greater Vision, Crabb Family, The Bishops (they come in again later), etc.) Dad started sponsoring gospel singings at Sunray, so these famous people became real in my life, and our family grew very close to several singing groups, both local and national. We often planned our vacations around gospel singings so that we could hear the music while also seeing the country.
During the ages of 10--12, I went through a musical rebellion. I didn't want to sing or have anything to do with music, but since Dad was in charge of the music in church...I had to sing. For a while my parents begged me to keep singing, but I adamently refused. They just let it go for a while, until I suddenly, out of the blue, had a desire to sing. As my voice matured, I realized I could easily hit notes way above the staff. And since no one else in church could do that and I thought it was really cool...welcome to music, once more!
When I was in 7th grade, I decided to give the whole band thing a try, picking up the flute. I played that for one year before Hilger took a group of us to a drum corps show, convincing me to switch to mellophone. I was supposed to play flute after marching band was over, but I made a bet with Hilger that if I could make honor band on horn, he would let me become a horn player full time. By the grace of God, I made last chair in the band and got my desire to play a brass instrument. Later that year, Tyler and I had been fighting, and since he lived right down the street, I was moping about for a couple of weeks feeling bored and lonely. Dad found a way to distract me--give me a sketchbook so I could practice my art while introducing me to the one and only...Beatles. Changed my life. After they blew my mind with their wonderfulness, my musical tastes turned to that of a freshman hippie chick. My favorite CD was the forest gump soundtrack (peace, man!) and I had more shirts with Paul's face on it than the original girls at Shea Stadium.
As I grew closer to Matt and Tyler, my musical awareness broadened. We would experiment the idea of a garage band (our only song was Heart of Worship, haha) and sit in the back of the bus on band trips and listen to green day at top volume...we were pretty punk, yo. I learned about modern country music, too, as we would listen to Rascal Flatts's latest albums every day at lunch in my mom's classroom. When Matt started driving, I was introduced to the world of popular music as we would drive around and blast KJ from his system. Then Junior year, I met Mrs. C, who took us up to OCU and exposed us to classical music and orchestration. Senior year, I began to feel music. My eyes welled with tears in sheer amazement at hymns such as "There is a Balm in Gilead" and "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" written and arranged for bandstration. My senior solo was Three Hymn Settings, a mixture of Abide With Me, Amazing Grace, and Shall We Gather at the River? The Amazing Grace arrangement was so beautiful, it better be played at my funeral someday. I got really involved in songwriting on the guitar, and began playing for tip money at Rodney's pizza. That gig is helping me pay for college, in addition to opening doors for more experiences. God gave me the chance to do worship gigs and perform on stage with some gospel greats (Mark Bishop, from the Bishops I mentioned earlier? I got to play before him...and he said I was really good! I almost fainted, best music moment of life!). The worship gig was an amazing experience--leading 100 women in worshipping our Savior? Nothing compares to that.
And now, I am a music major (go figure haha). I've been exposed to so many different genres and beautiful factors of music that I am fearless to try out new artists. My ipod has almost 6000 songs, and I feel that music or noise is a necessity to my every day life. When words fail, music speaks, especially the songs about my Savior and His love for me (i may have lots of music in my world, but my absolute favorites are the ones I grew up with--worship songs to God. I collect hymnals and ravenously read them, always seeking old hymns that are new to me :) I can be dumbfounded in awe of the realization that God made music. He is a musician! He created E flat major, dissonant chords, perfect fourths, etc...ALL FOR OUR ENJOYMENT. He gives songs to our hearts in our hard times, helping us to carry on. And when we are in distress..."He will quiet us with His love, and rejoice over us with singing." (zephaniah 3:17) What a wonderful thought!
Anyways, now that I've had my ramble that probably makes no sense to the general public, time to write an english draft! ;)
God bless!
Katie
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