Gather Around the Piano
Hello music family! I am Kenneth Gay, Jr and usually you can find me serving The Music Academy on the Board or at the Annual Gala. This month, though, I am honored to be able to guest blog on the Music Academy’s website. I am passionate about all music, the Academy, and all it does to promote the musical arts in the Greater Greensboro community!
Who am I? Well, I grew up down east in Farmville and Fountain, NC as a young man surrounded by music. My mother played and sang, my sister played and sang, so it was very natural for my younger brother and I to pattern and mimic what we saw. Many happy holidays, especially at Christmas time, we spent singing songs at the piano. As a young child, there was nothing more joyful to me than to ask our older sister to play “Jingle Bells” on our older Rudolf Wurlitzer upright piano. She would kick it off with a glissando and kick her foot on the pedals of the piano to keep time. I was mesmerized, I was hooked, and it was the beginning of my musical journey.
My mother was a long-time supporter of music, and she not only directed the choir at my home church, but she also played the piano at church and school as a substitute. As a choir stand kid, I was usually perched to the side of the choir stand or relegated to tape recorder duty as Mama gave a soul-stirring Gospel performance many Sundays.
It didn’t take long for me to fall right in line with the other family members, so I started with guitar lessons initially, later moving to piano lessons. I was able to get a basic introduction to theory; chords, keys, melodies, tempo, major and minor, diminished, augmented. . . it was enough to make my head spin as a young kid. I learned all I could at the time on those two initial instruments, but a short time later discovered the drums and vocal performance. As a young man, it was something about percussion, rhythm, and beating on things that attracted the rebel in me. Full circle, I ended up as a singer, songwriter, and producer. I still play keyboard instruments and drums!
Life could not have been sweeter punctuated by singing and playing music at church and school in the band and choir. Just when things were going so well in our family, tragedy struck. My father was diagnosed with leukemia in the 80’s. Cancer, or the “C” word, as some of us would not or could not even say it, was devastating, and nearly all of our private and public hopes, dreams and prayers were for Dad. This was a major challenge for our family… to watch such a hard-working, committed, loving father, slowly lose his battle, year after year, with such a terrible disease.
We didn’t know it yet, but we all sought refuge in the healing powers of music, what’s called music therapy today. It didn’t matter how sad or angry, or if it was a fleeting moment of joy, the piano was there to frame that moment for us. The piano could play a happy upbeat song to encourage you, or a moving minor key holiday spiritual song to help you cope with the anxiety of loss. The Wurlitzer could be played to belt out a foot-stompin’, toe-tappin’, hand-clappin’ number to make you smile and augment the joy that was being experienced. Sometimes, I would just sit and play whatever came out, which provided a frame and backdrop to certain moments where you didn’t even understand what you were feeling. Gathering around the piano, for that moment, our family became one, expressing soulful emotion. We were on one accord and in a unified rhythm, that only music can relay against a medical menace.
Even though Dad lost his battle with the disease, we learned the power of music therapy. From that experience, I learned to make it a point to keep a piano in the house! When life gets complicated, messy, joyous, scary, or any other emotive or hard-to-express moment, I can always rely on the music and the piano to help bring clarity. I keep the tradition going today. I was able to locate, with the help of Mark Love at Steinway Piano, a white baby grand Rudolph Wurlitzer piano. It is indeed the center of music healing in our household.
I encourage parents to keep instruments of all kinds available in their household and to encourage lessons like those offered by the Music Academy. I believe each kid or adult, paired with the right instrument, frees creativity and boundless music therapy.
There is an embroidered poem a friend gave our family that I keep on my wall in my recording studio to remind me of those special music-healing moments and it goes like this:
“For the common things of every day,
God gave man words, in a common way,
But for the heights and depths that words cannot reach,
God gave man music, the soul’s own speech”
Don’t stop the music!
Ken
Kenneth “Ken” Gay, Jr. is a singer, songwriter, and producer in the local Greensboro community, a tech/media consultant, and owner of the 336 Studio Worx, a production and music publishing recording studio. You can follow his releases and musical work on Instagram @songsbyken or @336studioworx and reach him at kennethgayjr@gmail.com.
