My Oma's Musical Autobiography

For this blog I decided to interview my grandmother on my mom's side of the family, who we all call Oma.  I was really looking forward to this interview since I rarely get to see or talk to her (she lives all the way out in Texas), and was very interested to learn more about her background and musical experiences growing up.

In preparation for this interview, I came up with many questions I wanted to ask Oma. Little did I know that all I would say was "I have this class assignment and would like to interview you about your experiences in music growing up" and Oma would give me all the information I needed :)

The following is my Oma's musical autobiography in a nutshell:

"It all begins with my grandparents. They both sang, specifically religious music such as hymns. They had a pump organ in their house, and friends and family would come every weekend to play country western music. Pampa [my Oma's grandfather] received his first fiddle when he was 6 or 7 years and it only had two strings. But that's what he learned on and he could play any instrument with strings. He played the guitar, the fiddle, the bass fiddle. If it had strings he played it. I never saw him play the banjo. But he played the rest of them and played mostly country western and hymns. Pampa loved hymns. He wrote songs which were about God and Jesus. And of course I grew up with Daddy [this is my fiddle-playing great-grandfather with the dog who would sing along with him] who had his own country western band."

"I don't ever remember listening to music on the radio. Of course, we didn't have a television until I was in.... high school? Yeah, I think high school. And Dad only listened to music and quiz shows. He didn't care for the movie-type things. And of course Pampa, if it weren't Hank Williams or something like that, he'd say 'Turn it off!'"

(Hank Williams)

"And I took piano lessons for years. I started when I was in the third grade, I think. And I took until I was..oh, about ninth or tenth grade. And of course the music I took was classical. And they decided that I would like it better if I took more modern music. So I took music from a man who had a School of Music. He would take songs and write the chords in, and it would be mostly fast rhythms. And that's the music we had and we grew up with."

"My brother was born probably more musically inclined than I am (or was... or is...). He played the piano, he played the slide trombone, and he played the drums in Daddy's band if Daddy could convince him to. He had good rhythm, he had a good ear, but that just wasn't his thing."

Wire Recorder

"We had a record player and a wire-recorder [see image above] and a cousin of mine gave me for graduation a set of Beethoven, Chopin, and something else records. I would love to know where they ended up... of course my dad didn't care about that and Opa [my grandfather] doesn't really care for classical music so I quit playing it when he was around. About the most he liked was 'Let's go Fly a Kite'. He told our associate pastor that he wanted to play that for his funeral, and [the pastor] said, 'well, then you can't have your funeral in our church. The preacher won't allow that'."

                                                                 Let's Go Fly A Kite

"I taught piano. First, just for a neighbor girl. And then for one of her friends. And then my music teacher let me take her beginners. I put the kids [my mom and uncle] into piano and paid for their lessons by teaching the teacher's beginners. Vycke [my mom] enjoyed it, but Johnny [my uncle]... every step of the way there 'I'm not going, I'm not going' and every step of the way back 'I'm not going back, I'm not going back' is what he said. In Germany, they took from Dino, a Christian pianist who studied at Julliard. But then the colonels [they were living on a military base at this time] realized what talent Dino had and made him move into the officer's club and play piano for their dinners.

Dino Kartsonakis

"But the kids really didn't enjoy playing piano and that was about the end of it for them. Like I said, it wasn't until I was in the ninth grade that I got brave enough to tell Daddy that I wasn't interested in it anymore. Of course it wasn't too long that I got interested in Opa."

"That about sums up our music in a nutshell"

My mom's side of the family at my sister's wedding two summers ago.

My Oma is the beautiful woman on the left in the blue dress :)