The power of music.
If these walls could speak
Or play back the melodies written
on my grandmother's piano
By at least three generations of musical poets
As well as the inherited, ancestral spirits
Of Redding, Chopin, and Withers,
The very heavens would stop to listen
As the ghosts of better days
Played their melancholy tunes,
Their hopes and dreams, and sometimes crude
Attempts at scenes from everyday life,
Painted in black and white
On sheets with bars and lines
If these walls could speak
It would see tears – both of joy and sorrow
Mingled in the cup we as mortals heft to drink
And imbibing this dichotomous cocktail
Humanity is enjoyed
This room has soul
From the kick of the bass
To the stirring of the trembling, tremolo of the mandolin
The gentle pressing on the frets
At just the right intervals of this heart
And the crispness of the snares and hats
As the swan song rambles on
Many a soul has been here, before passing on
Swallowed in the memoriam
Of better days gone by
When kids were playing chopsticks
And teens were playing punk
And when my brother bought his bass
The music turned to funk
And blues when the harmonica had its time
And folk on the autoharp and mandolin
Punk for the disenfranchised
And when times had changed,
And the prophets had died down
Young lyrical poets played piano
Trying to lay down bars
Many youths have come through this house
Have lingered in this room
And some of them, though old too soon
Seemed to stay here too
But there’s one thing that cannot be denied
In this room, the music lives, and never will it die.
Andre Labuschagne