My Musical Autobiography

The beginning of my musical life, as told by my mother, occurred when I was a toddler and went around singing Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart" to anyone and everyone that would listen. Needless to say, I grew up listening to and loving country music. As a child when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered "a country singer" without hesitation. However, country music was not the extent of my musical exposure as a child. I am half Mexican, and my grandparents did their best to expose me to that part of my culture whenever I was with them. In addition to the delicious food and colorful sombreros hanging on the wall, they also exposed me to Mexican music. I can still hear my grandfather singing along to the music, "ai, ai, ai, ai...," and the off-tune singing of my grandmother as she sang along to the music while cooking.

In elementary school my best friend, Samantha, and I met after school almost everyday to sing the latest hit songs into her karaoke machine and eventually began writing simple songs together. In fifth grade, I was finally old enough to be in the elementary school choir, and Samantha moved away. Before she moved away we wrote a very simple song together called "It's a Memory" which expressed our friendship and feelings about her leaving. The school's music teacher, Mr. Miller, put the song on paper for us and taught it to the rest of the choir, and we sang the song in the choir concert at the end of the year without Samantha. Also in the concert, we wore tye-die shirts and sang a variety of songs from the 60's and 70's, which is where my love of the song, "Puff the Magic Dragon" was born. In the rest of my time in several different choirs over the past 10 years, I have sang a few African call and response songs, and several African American spirituals.

During my time at Stetson University I took a class called Music Culture. In this class, we explored the music of several different cultures. The part of the class that had the biggest impact on me was the section on Indian music. An Indian musician came to class and played the drums and sang for us. This is when I fell in love with Indian music, and why my ipod has more Indian music than the average 21 year old girl raised in Nashville, TN.

I love learning about other cultures, and am ashamed to say that this is the extent of my contact with music of other cultures. I look forward to learning about and experiencing the music of this class.