Me and Music

I AM HIP-HOP!  Or should I say, "I AM MUSIC!".  I can honestly say that music raised me and has been in my life guiding me for as long as I can remember. It moves me mentally and emotionally. Even when I'm in church, I hear what the pastor is saying but NOTHING moves me like a good choir. I have had this love affair with music for as long as I can remember.  I actually would use a song to describe my self to someone that has never met me to clearly get my point across. When I think back I can remember the songs that represented different times or eras in my life.....  kind of like a soundtrack. 

I can remember when I was about 6 or 7 and heard Stevie Wonder's "Over Joyed" for the first time.  My mother told me that I would run around the house singing it all the time as loud as possible. That and Queen's "Bicycle".  (hahahahaha) I can remember seeing "Westside Story" for the first time as a kid and the feeling of amazement that I felt to see a movie that was expressed primarily by songs and dance. Then a couple of years later I got that same feeling again when I saw "Grease". Around that same time I was blessed with a music teacher by the name of Mr. Doster in Elementary School that taught me almost everything from the spanish alphabets to all of my 50 states by song. (If your from the Boro you remember him too) :o) I can remember when I went through my phase of running the streets, drinking and smoking with my older brothers and friends on the Hike I listened to 8 Ball & MJG's "Coming Out Hard" thinking that was what I wanted to do. Once I started to mature a little I can remember going back and listening to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" cd and being able to really listen to songs like "Mercy Mercy Me" and "What's Going On" and being able to understand what those lyrics were about.  Around that same time someone introduced me to a song that is lyrically one of my favorites..... "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley. I can remember being in college at Valdosta State and getting to an age where I wanted to get closer with God and reading the Bible because of some of the things that I was going through personally at that time. I was invited to a concert that VSU's choir was having and at that concert a young man performed a song that at the time I had never heard before that touched me so much that it made me cry. That song was Donnie McCurklin's "Stand". It was something about it lyrically that touched my heart and what I was going through. I can remember taking those same feelings to Athens and UGA with me and meeting a BEAUTIFUL young lady that I eventually married that told me that she would be here to help me with whatever I was going through and that a song that she loved reminded her of me and how I would be once I got through my situation.... and she played Yolanda Adam's "Since I Saw You Last Time".   I can remember the day I proposed to her that I listened to Stevie Wonder's "Too Shy to Say" over and over with my eyes closed praying and thanking God for bringing Aliceson to me. Then I can remember that on our wedding day when she was walking down to me that i gazed into her eyes and the only think I could hear was Smokie Norful's "If I Don't Have You". 

These are songs and moments that have shaped me into who I am today. I have so many more that I could list.  I'm sure if you think about it you can find the soundtrack to your life. You should try it..... write down the soundtrack to your life. You don't have to start from when u were a kid. Start from 5 years ago or start from when you met the love of your life. Let me see the songs that have captured and represented that time in your life. Maybe through your soundtrack I will understand more about you or where you were/are mentally during that/this time.