When Fran Molloy tagged me on Facebook, inviting me to post a picture of a favourite album, I simply couldn’t decide which one. The game was such that I had to tag other friends to invite them to post the same as well.
Finally, I settled for Romanza, which is Andrea Bocelli’s first compilation released internationally in 1997. It means a lot to me because that’s the beginning of my foray into the world of Italian classical tenors.
Needless to say, that invitation sent me into music overdrive, so to speak. Inevitably, I walked down the hallways of the past as I listened to my all time favourites of the 80’s and 90’s. Believe me, it was not only nostalgic, but totally refreshing as images flooded the brain and soul, especially when I hadn’t heard those songs for years.
Great songs carry great memories. I guess that’s why much research has been done on music-evoked autobiographical memories.
So I started to check out YouTube and, as if the site could read my mind, there was a whole list of familiar songs.
One of my hot favourites is That’s Why (You Go Away) by Michael Learns To Rock (MLTR). When I heard it in the 90’s, there was no YouTube and I never saw the music video. Now that I can see the images, I thought it is so clever how the lyrics are juxtaposed with the images.
Songs by MLTR, Alphaville, Blue, Toto and Westlife remind me of the fun we had in the classroom. Using music to teach English gives students a break from grammar and more grammar.
My students were ever so creative and would come up with enactments of song lyrics. They put in great effort and would even create their own props. There was a group that sang Lemon Tree by Fool’s Garden and they brought a tree trunk into the classroom with handmade paper lemons dangling from the branches.
Another beautiful song is Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin, where a father has no time for his young son, only to discover that the son, as an adult, no longer has time for him. I remember vividly how a group of students performed this song in four distinct acts, with different students playing the roles of the child, the 10-year-old, the college student and the father as an old man. I thought it was spectacular. I still have the video cassette of that performance and since I no longer have the player, I will convert that to a compact disc.
Thanks to the Internet, I am now able to see the different layers of meaning behind the lyrics. Take Big in Japan by Alphaville for example. In the 80’s, I thought it was about hopeful musicians making it big in Japan. But now, I know it is also about a young couple trying to live and love without substance abuse. The venue of the song, incidentally, is the Berlin Zoo, and the fact that I have been to the zoo twice makes it even more special.
I also never knew that Forever Young by the same group was written during the Cold War, where the singer is “hoping for the best, but expecting the worst; are you gonna drop the bomb or not?”
When we hear a very familiar song from the past, somehow, the location, the people and the season associated with that song appear vividly in the mind’s eye. Not unlike how smells and tastes evoke memories as well.
I had just baked an apple tart due to the overabundance of apples on my tree. My daughter took a whiff of the tart and told me it reminded her of the same tart that used to be sold in church for fundraising when she was still in primary school. She remembered that I steered her away from the table because money was tight then and buying that tart would be a luxury. I had totally forgotten that episode, but she remembers it well. Different circumstances in a different time zone.
And, it’s not only the past that songs and images evoke.
I know when I visit Africa next year, images of Tarzan swinging from tree to tree and Toto’s Africa will have a heyday in my mind.
Dr Koh Soo Ling was a lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Mara and now spends her days enjoying life as it is