Hey Cornwall Folk,

From the moment we are in our mother’s womb, we as animals are susceptible to sound. Like a baby kangaroo tucked in her mother’s pouch, over nurtured time these sounds become a “pitter-pattern” to our lives…..and we may not even know it! Inevitably, we are born as a cute baby and the sounds become ever acuter. If you listen hard enough, Mother Nature is our best musician and conductor. As the wind blows; she hums a melody, as precipitation falls; she sings a song and as the thunder roars; she is crashing cymbals. Sound is everywhere…..both in our daily lives and in the subconscious.

“Weather” you are in your car, on a lunch break, doing groceries or even doing housework on a Sunday afternoon, both sound and music infiltrate us. In our society, music can be accessed in various manners; from turning on the radio, flipping over vinyl and video cassette sides, popping in a cd or merely stealing content over the internet, we as humans crave our music. As the act of listening to music is vital, that same act is only one side of the coin.

Through my musical travels over the last few years I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t enjoy listening to music or who can’t recite their favorite song. On the other hand, what I do encounter in these travels are people who say they love listening to music but couldn’t keep a beat if their life depended on it. Speaking on behalf of Mother Nature, I would argue that everybody has a musical bone somewhere in their body, the coin’s second side.

Personally, I think there are too many broken veins to music and not one main unified umbilical chord. In my opinion, the mechanism to maximize music’s true power is to not only encourage the act of listening, but to also encourage and provide opportunities for people to observe, experiment, play and perform.

“Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us”—Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Alone, math is merely numbers; alone, language is just words; but together births music”–Chuck Leclair

Chuck Leclair is a local musician, songwriter, music promoter/activist and small business owner. He also musically donates his time to the CMHA and the Agape Center and is a Board of Director/Treasurer for our beloved Cornwall & the Counties Arts and Culture Council. E-mail comments and musical quotes to chuckleclair@hotmail.com or add him to Facebook to follow his events and shows dates.