![]() Perhaps because as a Black American oppression is like muscle-memory.īoko Haram in Nigeria, where my father was born, exemplified what can happen when a violent terrorist group demands control. And before October 7th, I - shamefully - didn’t have even a basic awareness of my own government’s unconditional financial support of Israeli policies that have resulted in the oppression of the Palestinian people, policies many human rights organizations have characterized as apartheid.Īs I scrolled my social media feeds, what was happening in the Middle East felt strangely familiar. Like most Americans, I cannot claim to be well versed in Hamas’s terrorism nor Israel’s occupation and blockade of the Palestinian territories. I wanted to learn another song she would know, and I landed on “ Tomorrow” from the “Annie” musical - a family favorite for the Okokon clan. My mom isn’t much of a '90s alt-rock fan, so the only song she’d been able to guess was “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. Radiohead’s “Creep.” Blind Melon’s “No Rain.” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”Įach week felt like new musical adventure, made only more enjoyable by my weekly “Name That Tune” game in my family group chat. I made a video of my achievement, posted it to my social media, and couldn’t wait to figure out a new ditty to teach myself next. I’m not generally a quick learner, but since I already knew the tempo, the song came so much easier. I googled and printed off the sheet music, and in a single night I taught myself to play it. Like a muscle-memory, it reminded me of the perfect movie soundtrack songs from my youth: “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls and Aerosmith’s “Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” I bet I could play that song on my flute, I told myself. Then, I fell in love with Billie Eilish’s “ What Was I Made For” from the “Barbie” soundtrack. I was having fun, but my sight-reading-tempo challenges coupled with my unfamiliarity with most of the songs the app offered, made it hard for me to know if anything I was playing was even remotely recognizable. Most recently, I downloaded an app - think Duolingo, but make it musical - and was delighted to find I still remembered how to read notes on sheet music, how to play a B-flat scale, and how to Pttth, Pttth, Pttth my way through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee.” I’ve taught and re-taught myself to play my flute plenty of times in the two decades since I first visited Nancy’s living room. And when I’m playing my flute, I need to quickly make that translation from the page, to my mind, to my mouth and fingers - or else I lose the tempo. Sonically, the difference between an eighth note and two sixteenth notes is huge, but I can never seem to correctly distinguish the tempo when I see the image of a quarter note with a tail versus two quarter notes connected by an overhead-bar. In sheet music, tempo is a visual, nuanced language that you translate into how quickly or slowly you play each note. The author, in 8th grade, a year after she first started playing the flute. All these years later, I still know how to hold my cheeks and pull my tongue in just the right way to create a sound across my flute’s mouthpiece. ![]() And anytime my mouth posture slipped, she’d hand me some rice so I could re-invoke the muscle-memory. The first thing Nancy taught me to do was spit rice. We met weekly in her formal living room which was filled with what - to my preteen, midwestern, suburban eye - looked like fancy Victorian-era furniture. She had bright white hair and seemed impossibly old to me at the time. When I was in the seventh grade, I began taking private flute lessons from a woman named Nancy. ![]() Facebook Email The author in a screen grab from a video she took of herself playing the flute.
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