Music & Family
To start out, this blog is about the music my parents grew up with and what music means to them. This one's a bit longer... but it's because there is so much to mention, and I couldn't leave any detail out!
At first, I decided to interview just my mom about the music she listened to and the way music has affected her throughout her life. However, I realized how much influence my mom and dad have had on each other-- being together for so long-- so I also interviewed my dad to incorporate his and my mom's relations to their changes in musical taste.
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Starting with my mother, she grew up in a family where music wasn't extremely important. Her parents listened to it, but their era/generation was very different from hers and it wasn't common for them to share music with her or her siblings. However, personally, music was significantly important to my mom. Both my parents were born and grew up in Singapore, which has a mix/diverse range of musical cultures. My mom described her childhood music as being split into two sides-- which are also split into multiple parts.
Because she attended a semi-private Christian school as a kid and teenager, my mom had a lot of exposure to English music. Unlike the more public neighborhood schools, which were mainly Chinese-speaking, my mom had a lot of friends/classmates who spoke English and listened to English music. The mainstream English music my mom listened to consisted of the typical 80s and 90s jams: the Backstreet Boys, Debbie Gibson, NSYNC, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Tommy Page, and more. She described her time with music as one with "no selective listening," where she could only listen to whatever came on the radio. On the other hand, my mom was involved in choir during her secondary school years (7th to 10th grade in the U.S.), so she also grew up listening to and singing a lot of gospel songs and hymns. Choir, furthermore, exposed her to general Christmas songs and Broadway/show tunes, such as songs from the Fiddler on the Roof and Beauty and the Beast.
The image on the right is one of my mom's biggest musical memories from when she was around the age of 17. She and her best friend had lined up 4 to 5 hours to obtain tickets for the Phantom Of The Opera-- her favorite musical ever. She purposely worked and saved up the money for these $180 front-row tickets. They were in line starting at 9 p.m. and waited until the ticket booth opened at 12 a.m.!
So, we've talked about one side of my mom's music taste. Now let's move on to the other. My mom's non-English musical side contains Chinese, Japanese, and Korean music. Back then, she specifically listened to popular Taiwanese singers-- such as Eric Chou, Rainie Yang, S.H.E, and Show Luo-- and Hong Kong singers (canto-pop). Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, and Leon Lai were famously known as the 4 heavenly singers/kings in Hong Kong. My mom would also listen to some Female Japanese artists (Utada Hikaru and Ayumi Hamasaki) and Japanese OSTs (original soundtracks) from animes and video games, like Bleach and Final Fantasy. Over time, her taste changed from Japanese to Korean music. After I was born, she didn't have much time to watch animes or play games, so she drifted from Japanese music. Nowadays, my mom mainly watches Chinese and Korean dramas, so she likes to follow and listen to many of the OSTs' singers. Other than that, her music taste hasn't changed drastically. She still listens to older English and Chinese songs, but she does have some modern songs in her playlists that I've introduced (Taylor Swift!!).
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As for my dad, he grew up with English music-- mainly late 80s and early 90s pop. He specifically started listening to English music in 5th grade; the Pet Shop Boys were the first he remembers listening to. Compared to my mom's family, music was a more important and popular activity in my dad's family. Much of his music taste came from my grandpa (his father), who was and still is a big music fan. Some of my grandpa's influenced music that my dad grew up with are soft rock and country artists, such as The Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits, Kenny Rogers, and Dolly Parton.
My dad also listened to some 90s rap and R&B music-- MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and Milli Vanilli. To listen to music, he used cassette tapes and walkmans up until society's switch to CDs. Back then, CDs were pretty expensive, so my dad remembers buying his very first one: an MC Hammer CD. While working in Singapore, he also began listening to some modern and contemporary jazz. Nowadays, he still prefers and enjoys music from when he was younger, but he does listen to country music, including modern country, more than he used to. My dad's all-time favorite artists are Mariah Carey (we have a Christmas ornament of her lol) and the Pet Shop Boys, and his favorite concerts have been the Buckeye Country Super Fest (at the Ohio Buckeye stadium) and a Josh Groban one.
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After getting together, my mom and dad have definitely influenced each other in some musical way. According to my mom, my dad had a more diverse range of English music. Their first concert date was an R.E.M. concert, which my dad said he won free tickets for due to a radio show contest. This concert exposed her to the rock and roll genre, which was not as common in Singapore. She also talked about him introducing European, U.K., and Australian artists, like Depeche Mode, U2, and Duran Duran. Their second concert date was a Savage Garden concert, which I assume my dad picked out. My mom described the concert as very romantic. I Knew I Loved You was her favorite performance from it. She loves the song and music video so much that she forced me to look it up on YouTube and watch it during her interview, so I thought I should include it here.
Ellie, I love how much care went into this post. I think you wrote about how important influences in your parents' lives (culture, school, each other, etc) has impacted their musical taste in such a lovely way.
ReplyDeleteI think it's neat that your parents have such diverse taste in music, and that they have integrated each other's music into their own.
ReplyDeleteEllie, I love that you discussed each person's different choices in music. This was well thought out and well written.
ReplyDeleteHey Ellie. I really liked your blog. I liked how you showcased that both of your parents grew up listening to music in English, but also different Asian artists.
ReplyDeleteHey Ellie, I liked this post because I thought it was interesting that your parents consider musicals as a part of their music taste. No one in my family likes musicals and i have not been to one so I thought that was unique
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