Tune Ah Tune Ah

Music for magical mundane moments

My exhibit opening on June 5 at Burnt Bridge Cellars went very well; people came, the dinner sold out and friends sent photos of themselves enjoying my art, the wine and the music! ¹

I, however, spent the opening day at the urgent care medical center finding out that the covid I had in early May which led to complications has now resulted in those complications having new complications.

Sigh.

So I'm still dealing with all of that - which means that I cherish even more the photos that my friends, the winery and my gallery rep Caplan Art Designs have sent me!! Here's a link to a video that Caplan Art Designs made of my exhibit https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Ge9HyBV1y/

While I was in urgent care one of the doctors and I started talking about art and music, you know like one does in such medical situations 😆. So I learned about some new music - more on that in a sec - but mostly I began thinking again about how essential music is during hard times. The drawings I did in my sketchbook this week are music themed. I'll include them within my music related thoughts below.

Here's one of my paintings from my Mundane Magic exhibit currently at Burnt Bridge Cellars. My exhibit continues through the end of July.

Tune Ah Tune Ah
By Clancy
4 feet tall, 13 inches wide
Acrylic on flat canvas

Here below is a sketchbook page which I did while I was planning what became the finished painting above. As you can see I ultimately decided on a smaller unicycle wheel and a bigger wind instrument. I chose the color purple for the background to represent wisdom and creativity. But this sketch was fun starting place…

Music and musical instruments, especially the flute/wind instruments, predates the invention of the wheel. Which is why I made the unicycle wheel smaller in my final painting.

Bone flutes, many over 40,000 years old, have been found by Archaeologists in multiple locations in the world while the first wheels only appeared about 5,200 years ago, about 4th century BCE.² The early wheels were made in Mesopotamia and those were pottery wheels. Music and pottery were very important to human flourishing and it wasn't until 300 years or so after the pottery wheel that someone thought to make a wheeled transportation vehicle like a cart or chariot.³

Music was so important to human life that it predates even the pottery wheel! Imagine that! Humans valued and developed the tools to make music sooner than they developed the ability to make large jars for food storage! Then they used the pottery wheel to make food storage more quickly than they invented the wheel as an ability to transport people and things.

Music, historically, seems to have been more important to early humans than food, than the transportation of people and food!!!!

I thought about that while making my painting Tune Ah Tune Ah and I think of it still. Even nowadays we mark events like graduations, birthdays and weddings with music. We sing lullabies to babies.

Music is the stuff of our lives first… and then the food. We sing and then we cut the cake. We sing and then we feed the baby.

For most of human history the only music available was live music made by voices, rhythmic clapping and various instruments. The ability to record music and play it back didn't begin until 1877.⁴

But nowadays we can talk with others - even our medical folks - about music and simply share a link!

Here's the new-to-me music group, Clancy Brothers, that my doctor at the urgent care medical center told me about.

How fun is that?

Then later this week I really enjoyed this…

I enjoy recorded music but I like live music best! I might be human… 🙃😜

One of my favorite local live music groups, when I feel healthy enough to follow them like an excited groupie, is Jazz Interlude. Here's a drawing I did quite some time ago during one of their events. My line drawing was following one of their tunes …

Here's a video of Jazz Interlude in action.

I hope you have many good tunes of your own to enjoy in the upcoming days!

And now you know more of why I so firmly believe that the Arts - all of them - are important to human flourishing! They make mundane life magical!

Thank you for being here!! 💚

1. More details about my exhibit and opening night…

2. About early music instruments. https://historyfacts.com/arts-culture/article/what-was-the-first-musical-instrument/

3. About the invention of the wheel. https://historycooperative.org/who-invented-the-wheel/

4. About the ability to record music. https://www.britannica.com/topic/music-recording/The-development-of-musical-recording