Golden Notes

I’m supposed to be working, but my mind is very far from what I have to do right now. After all, I just got home and home is a place to relax and to invest some quality time in yourself! Even when you use the time to take some steps back into memory lane.

I just had an MSN conversation with a friend and somehow we started talking musical instruments. So I took a picture of one of my concertinas (I own two Wheatstone 3 3/4 rows) and another picture of an ancient accordion – the origin of the piano-accordion as we know it today. And then we started talking music and instruments, and I started thinking of the golden notes when I grew up.

I was raised in a house with music, and my dad had an old box guitar which he once or twice in a month removed from its weathered case and played for me and my sister and my mom. And then he will pick some songs, and we will all embrace the sounds and enjoy the music and sing along until late on a Saturday-evening.

When I was about 6 years old, I was allowed to play on my dad’s “trap-orreltjie” for the first time. I don’t have a clue what you call that in English, but in essence it's a very old organ that you have to pump with your feet to generate the wind that makes it play. I think it belonged to my dad’s grandmother on the farm when he was a child and he ended up getting it after they passed away. It was always just a part of our living room in Uitenhage.

Anyhow, my dad taught me how to play one song with one finger, the right hand index finger. Later a single note on the left hand side were added and there my love for music was born.

In 1972, my dad bought a piano and my sister and myself had to take piano lessons. But until today I can’t read notes, and in standard 6, I gave it up, because guys who played piano was regarded as softies. Today I wish that I’ve never given in to that peer pressure. But it’s a huge embarrassment when you are a teenager to be called a softy because of your love for music.

Anyhow, my dad always wanted a concertina. He learned to play when he was a young chap, but never owned his own instrument. So one day, he saw this secondhand Wheatstone in excellent condition at Bothners, the music shop in Port Elizabeth. For a very good price. I will never forget my mom’s expression of horror when he brought it home that evening. She was furious because of all the money he paid for his precious little squash-box. We always had food and clothes and a hcar and a house and what-ever, but my mom was just not happy with him for buying such an item of luxury.

If my dad hadn’t bought that concertina, I don’t know what he would have done with his leisure hours. Because he practiced and played and loved that little concertina with a huge, huge passion for the instrument and the music he created with it. Whenever our family had a get-together, my dad was there with the concertina and I had to play the guitar with him.

Even when I got older and moved out of the house, the one thing that made my dad the happiest, was when he played the concertina and I played rhythm-guitar with him. Which I hated off course when I was in school, but once grown-up, I realized that this was actually the moments when I could really spend quality time with my dad.

I miss the sound of his endless hours of practicing and trying and mistakes and then at long last getting it right somewhere in the wee hours of the morning. After he passed away, I inherited two of his Wheatstones. This in addition to the one that he “borrowed” to me many years ago. Somehow it just doesn’t feel the same to play without him forever criticizing me - even over the phone some evenings when he phoned me with “Can you play that song already? You must practice lots more!!”. Because music and specifically the concertina was the one single thing that really bonded me and my dad.

The little “trap-orreltjie” is still in my mom’s house in Uitenhage. It now belongs to me, but I’m so scared something will happen to it when I try to move it to my house here in Gauteng. So I keep on postponing any plans to get it back here.

I hope that my dad is somewhere in a part of heaven where there is ample time for his music and his love for sharing it with whoever wishes to listen.

Because those golden notes that he always created were what made him my very, very special dad. . . . .

Until next time…