What is it that makes us feel good?  I’ve spent the early part of the day delivering our son (drummer) to the Upper Hunter Wine and Food Affair, strolling around briefly, sipping on a latte, and listening to a bit of big band music, performed by the Muswellbrook Shire Concert and Jazz Band.  

It’s a mostly sunny day, the temperature has been perfect, and there’s a nice cooling breeze, which although it was helping keep that temperature ideal, wasn’t very helpful to the musicians and their music.  Having said that, sitting at a table under an umbrella listening to the music, while the smells of fresh coffee interspersed with garlicky deliciousness wafted past was delightful.

I’m not normally a jazz/swing/big band kind of person, but really, who could resist humming along to Mustang Sally in an atmosphere like that?  I love music, just not that type usually.  But there’s something about Big Band stuff, full of saxophones, funky bass and drums, and vocalists who explore their whole range of expressiveness, that just “goes” with a Wine and Food affair.

It got me pondering on music in general, and the way that it enhances life.  It brings us to tears, rouses our national pride, makes us laugh, and causes our souls to soar.  Music makes sense of emotion in a concrete and tangible way that is somehow still ethereal and abstract.  In some way, music is emotion that we hear.  

What movie would be complete without its soundtrack?  What national event without its anthem?  (Even if I wish ours was different!)  And although I’m a writer, sometimes music allows me to express myself even more freely than writing or saying the words.