As a child I learned the word ‘acculturate’, when my grandmother, born in a Louisiana summer of 1903, reflected that her generation as the last to be acculturated by people while we shucked peas together on the back porch.

She was referring to how my parents, who both knew how to play music, didn’t play music socially like her generation did.

Until that moment I had no idea that her son, my father, grew up writing poetry and played piano well.

My mother played piano and sang to, but unlike her mother, she never played with other people.

My material grandfather didn’t play music, but he did what he called ‘prestidigitation’, he practiced close-up magic.

Anyway, my point is that no matter how dirt poor, making music, not just consuming music, to play an instrument and-or sing, was until around the 1920s and 30s, and for thousands of years before, commonly assumed to be an essential part of personal, familial and community identity, it was part of what drew us closer to each other.