The Power Of Music

     The first documented piece of music was the Seikilos Epitaph.  It is a complete musical composition - including lyrics - written in the ancient Greek musical style and found engraved upon a tombstone near Aidin, Turkey.  The find has been dated anywhere from 200 BC to around AD 100, with the first century following the birth of Christ to be the most likely guess.  The last two words on the tombstone are "Seikilos Euter{pei}" meaning "(from) Seikilos to (presumably his wife) Euterpe", thus creating the world's first long distance dedication and thus beating Casey Kasem to the punch by roughly 2,000 years.
     Translated into English, the words on the tombstone read:
   
     While you live, shine,
     have no grief at all;
     life exists only for a short while,
     and time demands its toll.

     Seikilos found his voice in the safe harbor of music, and through it gave an eternal voice to his love for his wife.  In it, she assuredly found comfort.
     Throughout the many years since Seikilos walked the earth, human beings have created music for their own enjoyment, as a means of expression, and as a way to pass and create mental and personal milestones through their lives.

     Today, music is everywhere.  It is found playing as a calming influence in baby nurseries; serving the same purpose for patients in dentist chairs; pumping up crowds at sporting events; providing peace and comfort at funerals.  Schools teach it, radio stations perpetuate it, motor vehicles have it, homes are filled with it.  It is portable and permanent, recorded in all forms and styles by all the world's people, and is now even found - only by perspective and lucky extraterrestrials, NASA hopes - aboard our little ambassador the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 including the form of recordings of Mozart, Beethoven, and, of all things, Chuck Berry.  The record sent on the Voyager also had the words "To the makers of music - all worlds, all times." handwritten on it. 

     Music also has the ability to stop war.  In one famous incident on Christmas Eve 1914 along Europe's World War I Western Front, exhausted German and British troops stopped the slogging and the slaughter for a brief truce in which gifts and family photos were shared, handshakes given, and each side understood the others common humanity.  Both sides sang the words to "Stille nacht, heilige nacht," which the British troops knew as "Silent Night."  Soon, both sides retreated to their frozen bunkers and the carnage was to begin anew.  But for a while, peace reigned with the help of a musical creation.
     Not all of us are given the gift of musical talent.  My father's family is rife with that gift from top to bottom, including my grandfather's involvement with the Franklin, Nebraska town Clown Band, the many musical talents of my aunts and uncles (and father), and the creation of, and participation in, by my uncle Don in a musical group quartet with the best name ever thought of for such a numerically-specific venture:  The Uncalled Four.  Unfortunately, the gene of the musical gift stopped with me.
     I tried trombone for two years but never "got" it or liked it much.  Oh, I can sing a bit and can carry a note fairly well but that's hardly the same.  The best I can do as far as understanding music is that in my mind I can "hear" chord progression and change, whatever that's worth.  I think it's this instinctive gift that my now-passed ancestors are still trying to shove down my throat despite my inadequacies.  All I can say is God Bless them for trying.

     The musical klutzes among us can still love it for what it is worth, though.  We can still marvel at the power of Bach, the fire of a Jerry Lee Lewis, the passion of a Roberta Flack, or the simple pop schmaltz of a Christopher Cross or an Olivia Newton-John in spite of our inability to ever even remotely personally create something as good.  We can still feel the weight of the darkness when driving down a nighttime highway with Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" blaring at full volume, or seeing the sky brighten to the notes of Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" or The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun."  Through our senses and our collective DNA we are able to love what we cannot personally create, to appreciate what we cannot concoct.  One day we will carry our love of music to the stars with us, and it will sooth the strain of our long journey, the loneliness for what we have left behind, and will help make smooth the rough edges of a new creation and a new civilization that will most likely need all the civility it can get.