The other day for some odd reason I was drawn to my mountain
dulcimer that I hadn’t touched in four years.
I’ve never been able to play anything more than a few easy children’s
songs but I love the sound under my fingers. My son, Robert, could play the
mountain dulcimer and hammered dulcimer wonderfully; he composed lovely songs
for both instruments. While in high
school, Robert competed in the National Hammered Dulcimer championship and
placed in the top five. He always said
he wanted to go back and win the whole thing—and I bet he would have.
I was grappling with trying to tune the darn thing because,
well, I have no musical ability, no tuning fork or electronic tuner—and I have
a tin ear. Robert could naturally “hear”
when an instrument was out of tune; he got this genetically from his musically-gifted
father. I guess I inherited my mother’s
love for music but not being able to carry a tune—even in a bucket! I’ve always
needed someone to tune the dulcimer for me and then I can play my great repertoire
of hits like “Incy, Wincey Spider” and “Boil them Cabbage Down.”
I decided to check on
YouTube to see if there were any dulcimer tuning videos and there were
plenty. It was still difficult for me
and I got frustrated with the whole thing.
I started browsing around at other videos and came across one called “Twilight
Eyes” sung by Cyndi Lauper who plays the mountain dulcimer. In fact Cyndi has said that she composes her
tunes using the mountain dulcimer; pretty cool for a rocker chick. Anyhow the video is a moving tribute to David
Schnaufer, an excellent mountain dulcimer player, who died from cancer in 2006
at the age of 53.
I was familiar with David and his talent but somewhere I had
missed that he had died the same year as Robert. That probably has something to do with me not
remembering much from that time period. David’s death happened four months
after Robert’s tragic accident and only six months before my mother died. I listened to the video and it is a haunting
tune and the pictures are placed so nicely with the music. It is a song about loss and love that Cyndi
wrote. Give it a listen and I hope you
enjoy it too. http://youtu.be/1xNGSLwQbpQ
