Week 13: Music

 Week 13: Music


Is Musical Talent Hereditary?

For this week’s prompt I had to go a little closer to home as I have yet to find any wandering bards, operatic divas or country stars.  The furthest ancestors I know of whom music was a significant part of their lives are my children’s grandfathers.  


Stanley Stevens Kirkpatrick (1934-2012) When I was a kid, my dad had a jumbo acoustic guitar that he would strum in the living room.  He played such memorable ditties as “I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water.”  Later on, he bought an amp and a Lyle electric guitar which he kept by his chair in a guitar stand. He figured if it was out, he’d be more likely to play it. He liked to play old country songs, mostly around the house but sometimes with relatives at family functions. On occasion he would take his guitar to a hootenanny at the Sweet Service or Ola Service and play with locals who also were musical. (By the way, there is a significant difference between a hootenanny and a hoedown according to my dad: a hootenanny is a jam session and a hoedown involves dancing.  We went to hoedowns on occasion at the Sweet or Ola grange halls, but Dad didn’t play at those.) 


None of us kids caught on to playing musical instruments though I took guitar lessons, piano lessons, and played clarinet and sax in the high school band.  I was never good at it.  My brother had a brief stint with the trumpet, and my sister took piano lessons briefly.  Both my sisters were actively involved in the dance teams at high school, and their daughters also were active dancers. 


 Milton Wayne Albert (1929 - 2015) My husband Kyle’s father grew up near Chicago.  The Big Bands were popular when he was a young adult.  Wayne was a drummer who was part of a jazz ensemble when he was going to dental school in Chicago.  On weekends his band would go down to Decatur and play to earn some money for school. This is how he met Marie, Kyle’s mother. He had a drum set that was kept in the garage as Kyle was growing up.  I think when Wayne lived in Florida, after the death of Marie, when he was living alone, he set the drums out and played them.


Kyle played the viola (and hated it) as a kid.  I think his mother insisted on it and took him around to retirement homes to play for the residents.  In an act of rebellion as a teen, Kyle announced that he would no longer play the viola but had joined the jazz band at school. At this point he took up the guitar and has been playing off and on ever since and is quite good at it.  Of our kids, Logan is the one who caught the music bug and played brass instruments - mostly the trumpet, in middle school and high school.  He took advantage of nearly every band class offered at high school: concert band, marching band, jazz band. While he hasn’t played in the last few years.  The trumpet sits in its case in the living room. 


If there is a musical talent gene, I think Logan got it from his paternal grandpa Wayne and his father Kyle because he sure didn’t get it from me. 

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