Each Time

Each time someone posts a video on Face Book or I listen to vocal competition on television of want-to-be entertainers, I’m so impressed with the difference in their range, tone, and style. I enjoy hearing most of them. I’m not enamored with all styles, but some of my bias is because of my age. Some styles were before my time and I’ve grown to appreciate them, while some I haven’t acquired a taste.

I wasn’t raised on the classics or opera, but I’ve learned to enjoy them for the most part. The first opera I was exposed to was the American opera, Porgy and Bess. At a young age, it was a moving experience. My young ears could understand the words unlike the stories of operas sung in different languages.

Jazz and blues were popular before I was born. Certain voices of that era have a special allure for me: Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, and Etta James are just a few. The sandy, almost grating voices of Janice Joplin, Joe Cocker, and Mama Cass Elliot had a certain attraction for me as well. Blue grass and the old country singers: Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, or Boxcar Willie. I listened to the crooners: Frank Sinatra, Luther Vandross, Nat King Cole, and Judy Garland. They seemed to spin dreamers’ webs.

Early Rock and Roll had their roots in southern blues and country. Singers like Bo Diddly, Chuck Berry, Tina Turner, and Elvis Presley graced history’s stages and wooed young people into following their careers. I could go on and on. Bands and groups started to wean my heart and ears away from singers and more to the music of instrumentals. My least favorite music is rap. I just can’t get into it. The voices of the entertainers are lost in the rhyming with the rhymes coming too often and too fast to enjoy.

After saying all of this, I’m trying to make the point that the human voice is the greatest instrument ever created. The human voice is more beautiful and more versatile than an organ, a piano, a guitar, or a set of bagpipes. Mankind’s vocal chords have an almost unbelievable range of tones. When I think there is no way a person’s voice can take my heart and soul to higher plane someone sings an inspirational song, a heart-felt tune, or a hymn. The human voice from bass to soprano, I love them.