ONE of the best things about having a Skype conversation with my daughter and baby grand-daughter is that I can hear what’s going on at the other end. Which wasn’t the plan at all. The whole point of Skype – well, the whole point is that it’s free.
But after that, the point is supposed to be that you can see the person you’re talking to. Which is great. Even when the person you’re talking to is tanned and healthy and dressed in a T-shirt, whereas you’ve had to drag yourself out of bed at dawn and your hair looks like a chargrilled Brillo pad and it’s absolutely freezing. Skyping all the way to Sydney has a way of reminding you just how many time zones and seasons your technology is skipping across.
It also, however, provides a treat for the ears – in the shape of its accidental soundtrack. When the window of the bedroom of my daughter’s house in the Western suburbs is open – as it usually is – I can hear half a dozen different Ozzy birds as they whoop and chortle their way through the jacaranda trees towards the creek at the bottom of the hill. If there’s a rhythmic swishing sound, I know my son-in-law is at his regular evening task of sweeping dead leaves from the decking so they don’t get into the swimming pool and clog up the filter. Gurgling, chuckling, raspberry-blowing and the occasional outraged hoot as computer-related wires are removed from within her chubby, dribbly, determined grasp? Well, that would be baby Ava in full flow.
It's all, quite literally, music to my ears. Indeed if I could figure out a way to get it onto my iPod, I'd be replacing Sigur Rosand Segu Bluewith a spot of Sydney Live. I am, I freely admit, besotted. Most people wouldn't consider the sound of Daily Life Down Under to be particularly musical – but then, I consider the sound of Jennifer Rush to be marginally less appealing than a dentist's drill, and still I had to sit glumly sipping a ridiculously over-priced cup of tea one morning while she made her way through The Power of Loveat top volume. I cast a furtive look around the cafe: inexplicably, not a single punter had their hands over their auditory organs.
Okay, I’m a musical snob. I can’t abide the kind of glossed-up whingeing that passes for singing in reality TV-land and I’m sorry, but Russell Watson doesn’t count as an opera singer. (If you disagree, go and check out Alfredo Kraus or Ian Bostridge or even early Domingo, and see if you can spot the difference). Apart from that – and power ballads – I’m open to pretty much anything. And – I’m not, thankfully – alone. Rarely in the history of human cultural activity has the word “music” had such a wide definition as it currently enjoys.
Which is something Music Network, in association with Lyric FM, has decided to bring to everyone’s attention on Ireland’s first-ever National Music Day, scheduled for April 16th. The emphasis is on live music; the idea is to “highlight the value and importance of music within local communities”, and “celebrate music in all its forms”. Thanks to that little word “all” the organisers are hoping a vast variety of musical events will tune in, “from big bands to buskers, hip hop to Bartók and everything in between”. You can find out what’s happening near you – or, better yet, get in on the act and organise your own event – at www.lovelivemusic.ie.
It’s a bad time to be launching something like this because, frankly, the country doesn’t have much to sing about at the moment. On the other hand, there’s nothing like music – especially live music, which is all about physical vibrations and sound-waves and living in the moment – to take our minds off the horrendous fiscal situation in which we find ourselves. An outstanding live musical event lingers in the memory for years, if not for a lifetime.
They certainly do in mine. A magical night at the Budapest Spring Festival when Andras Schiff and a chamber ensemble conjured a breathtaking programme out of thin air. Vicar Street on the night of the Ramadan row – when some people walked out because they were asked to finish up their drinks so the performance could begin, and the rest of us stayed and ended up giving Youssou N’Dour and his fantastic Egyptian band a standing ovation. John O’Conor playing to a National Gallery so packed that we had to sit on the steps with our back to him. He still sounded brilliant.
Often, music is more about emotion than perfection. Sometimes it brings the priceless gift of surprise. In the autumn of 2007 I found myself standing in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity in Beit Lehem, sweating and dehydrated and profoundly saddened by the cynical nature of 21st-century religious tourism – not to mention the horrors of security checkpoints between Israel and the Palestinian territories. And then someone behind me started to sing, very softly. " Silent Night, Holy Night. . .") Oh, come on, you're thinking. What a cliché. Except that it wasn't. Nobody expects a German Christmas carol on a dusty autumn afternoon in the Middle East. The heartbreaking simplicity of the familiar melody spoke volumes about the bankruptcy of human spiritual, political and social traditions. But it also sang about our ability to hope, in spite of it all, that things might just get better. That we might, somehow, be able to start again. You'd never get away with that in words; but that's the magic of music. Find some for yourself, wherever you are, this National Music Day.