Family Reunions: Learn About Your Musical Heritage

It is family reunion season! Two weekends ago, we had a family reunion on my husband’s side of the family with the oldest living relative and only sibling of his grandma there.

Both sides of the family come from a long tradition of music. I remember my grandpa playing old player piano songs and my mother and all of her 4 siblings were in band. My husband’s family had singers and pianists from way back.

It was fun to hear about their musical adventures at our recent reunion and really fun to have my husband’s “Uncle Bryan” get up and lead a fun round. We contacted him after that to find out where he learned the round called, “Why Doesn’t My Goose”.  He divided us into 4 groups, sang it once and off we went into a 4 part round. Here it is on youtube:

My husband asked him where he learned this from and I did some research on other fun versions and wrote it down in a file for others to use for fun and learning.

Another fun musical thing they did at the reunion was what they called the cousin’s march. My husband’s mother and sister played music called, “Blaze Away” and they had the “cousins” line up in age order. They marched around We asked my husband’s mother about why they did the cousin’s dance. She said that when the cousins were playing and things got too wild, they’d line them up in age order and play “Blaze Away” on the piano while the kids marched around to calm them down.

Here is the youtube video of the cousin’s dance:

It was fun to hear and be involved in some of the family musical traditions. Be sure find out your family musical traditions and write them down!