Emily Wesenick, youth and family program manager
Burnt CDs and Spotify playlists are the soundtrack of my life. From Laura Marling, Mazzy Star, and Frou Frou on an “All Lady Playlist” to the dumping ground that has become the “Driving Playlist,” music fills every corner of my life. As a teenager, my room, and eventually my car, was littered with CDs that had been perfectly curated by hunting the internet for pirated versions of my favorite songs. It’s hard to imagine these songs or mystery CDs without also remembering who I was at the time that I made them.
Music is the ultimate form of communication. As a universal language, it cuts across any boundary that may exist, whether that be societal, cultural, or even through time. Musical traditions exist in every culture, from the Japanese traditional Taiko to blues music from the deep south to Kwv txhiaj, traditional Hmong song poetry. Created in a way that mimics the tones of a qeej, song poets utilize this musical tradition to pass down history allowing both the listener and the song poet access to the emotional impact that history had on the community.
This month’s Novel Notion book club pick, The Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang, allows readers a unique insight into the life of her father Bee Yang, a song poet who was driven from the mountains of Laos during the Vietnam War. As a young child, Bee utilized song to share what he was seeing in the world, transitioning that talent into adulthood where his songs allowed his children to connect to their homeland and its traditions thousands of miles away. Yang continues her father’s voice through writing after the hardship of being a refugee in Minnesota and the death of his mother cause his songs to go quiet. Throughout the book, we discover how Bee Yang took a life of war, poverty, and hardship, and polished into something that may one day shine brighter than he could have ever imagined.
I hope that you will join us for Novel Notions on Friday, July 25 from 5 – 6 pm to allow the music of Kao Kalia Yang and her father the space to grow as we discuss both The Song Poet and the work of Pao Houa Her on view in the exhibition Double Exposure: Community Portraits. While the burnt CDs of my teenage years won’t be playing loudly in the background, I may have the perfect playlist for the occasion.
