Colors in Music
Are you someone who sees colors when you hear music? Only a very few people have an extraordinary sensory ability called synesthesia, and only a fraction of those actually see colors when they hear music. I’m not aware of anyone in our Quail Ridge Chorus who is a synesthete, but our director, Emily Carter, chose repertoire that encouraged our singers to explore the relationship between music and colors. The opening number of our recent concert was by Pinkzebra:
More songs spanned the color spectrum:
- What a Wonderful World by George David & Bob Thiele
- Blackbird by John Lennon & Paul McCartney
- Bein’ Green by Joe Raposo, my personal favorite
- Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
- Blue Skies by Irving Berlin
- Over the Rainbow by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg
- Orange Colored Sky by Milton Delugg and Willie Stein.
At the concert last Thursday evening it was rewarding to see audience members singing along with Blackbird and Big Yellow Taxi; a few shed tears during Over the Rainbow. Three days later one chorus member reported an experience she had with What a Wonderful World when she visited a church in Nashville TN.
Evelyn Dieckhaus, one of three children killed by an assault rifle at the Covenant School last Monday, was a member of Woodmont Christian Church where she was in my granddaughter’s Sunday School class. In his sermon Rev. Clay Stauffer described this 9-year-old girl as a light wherever she went, outgoing and very energetic. She was to sing a solo in a play this past Friday at her school. The song she was going to sing was…. What a Wonderful World. As he read the words to the song, I sang them in my head with tears in my eyes. We sang that song just last Thursday. Maybe we sent some happiness in her memory without even knowing it.
The Chorus sang
I see trees of green, red roses, too.
I see them bloom for me and you,
and I think to myself What a Wonderful World.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white,
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
and I think to myself What a Wonderful World.
In Nashville, the three children and the three adults who died trying to protect them saw different colors: fear, terror and death–the very worst of our world.
So I ask myself: how can we react to this horrible event and make our world wonderful again? I may not see colors, but I see possibilities: prioritize children over guns and restore the ban on selling assault rifles. As the words to Bein’ Green go through our heads, we can acknowledge and value the contributions of people of all colors. As we recall singing “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” in Big Yellow Taxi, we can vow to have fewer parking lots and take better care of our Earth. Since 1939 Americans have been singing “Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” We can “dare to dream” and work for actions that will ensure “Blue Skies from now on.”
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