Scarborough Fair

Today is Double Tenth Day in the Republic of China – I just happened to hear that on the radio today. It is also the day in 1966 (a mere forty years ago) that Simon and Garfunkel released their Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album. I remember singing Scarborough Fair in Elementary School (along with Don Gato) probably in ’68 or ’69. Even then it was pretty progressive – for folk rock! Our music teacher probably was a former hippie (or a closet hippie – whatever is the politically correct distinction now). She was pretty cool. Our School had these synthesizers that were amazing for the time – basically they were single boxes with knobs that you plug into a receptacle and had speakers. Our favorite was “white noise.” You had to orchestrate everything together in kind of a linear event. Now at our home we have a Yamaha keyboard with more styles and voices than we could have ever imagined! The advances of technology! Our teacher was also really into African drums – that was the first I ever heard congas and djembe. We even did an African drum and dance number at the school concert. I still love hand drums and even have a pair of congas which the kids also love to bang on. Gail and I really want to instill a love for music in our kids. Maybe that’s why Colin (6) kept playing the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine last night over and over on the iPOD. If we only had Scarborough Fair…