To accept the Silver Bloggers community's challenge #27 about the soundtrack of a decade, I must close my eyes and travel back in time. Not to my snowy present in Ontario, but to the valley of Caracas, Venezuela, in the late 1960s. I was 15 years old, the age when energy overflows and the heart begins to ask questions that only music can answer.
While the world was vibrating with psychedelic rock, my soul—already showing signs of being a hopeless romantic—was anchored in the vocal harmonies of three brothers: The Bee Gees. But not the ones with the mirror ball, but the melancholic poets of the early days.
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I remember the first time I heard “Spicks and Specks”, that rhythm, although lively, hid a nostalgia that I did not yet fully understand, perhaps because of my age and the poor translation at the time. Even so, I vibrated with it. That was the prelude to what was to come. Living in Caracas, Venezuela, at the time, songs like “To Love Somebody” were not just melodies; they were anthems of an era of innovation and rebellion. At 15, love is urgent, absolute, and Barry Gibb's heart-wrenching voice gave us permission to feel with hormonal intensity.
But if there was a defining moment that shaped my emotional aesthetic at that time, it was the arrival of the film Melody (1971). Although the film showed British culture in contrast to Latin culture, with its strict school uniforms and Latin classes, I saw myself reflected on my black-and-white television screen.
FILMAFFINITY
The soundtrack of that film stuck in my memory. I remember the sweetness of “In the Morning”, which sounded like the very awakening of life, an ode to the innocence we were about to lose as we became men. And what can I say about “Melody Fair”; that song was the perfect description of the feminine fragility we were beginning to admire with respect and shyness.
There were life lessons hidden in those vinyl records. The song “Give Your Best” unwittingly became a mantra that would accompany me later in my years of community service and in the hard times behind bars: give your best, even when no one is watching.
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The film and the era closed with a palpable melancholy in “First of May”. I remember listening to it and feeling that time was a tree growing too fast: “Now we are tall, and Christmas trees are small”. How true.
And although memory sometimes mixes up performers, that same spiritual soundtrack to the film resonated with the message of “Teach Your Children” (by CSNY, but inseparable from Melody's experience). Today, at 70 years of age, looking at my son Matthew, those lyrics take on a meaning that the 15-year-old could not have foreseen.
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That decade, with the Bee Gees as architects of my emotions, taught me that sensitivity is not weakness. It was the soundtrack of a Caracas that no longer exists, seen through a grey screen, but felt with all the colours of the soul.
Hi! Everybody, if you've made it this far, THANK YOU! You are welcome to participate; the link with all the information is below. But I also hope to read your comments in the reply box. Thank you for joining us in these waters of HIVE.
The Silver Bloggers Chronicles #27
Cover of the initiative.
Dedicated to all those writers who contribute, day by day, to making our planet a better world.
