Mother Tongue

English, of course. I took French in high school and a semester in college. Through liturgy, I’ve learned some Latin and Spanish, and I took a stab at Russian when I thought we were adopting from Nizhny-Novgorod. Ya Kate. Ya tvaya mama. But I am most definitely not bilingual.

 

Thus, I experienced a lot of trepidation leading up to the bilingual wedding Christian and I played yesterday evening. The bride teamed us up with three Hispanic musicians from Chicago. During rehearsal I watched them in mute amazement. They played off lyric sheets…just lyrics, not even chords. “What key?” Francisco asked, and off we went. It was a model of playing that I have heard of, but never experienced, with my two degrees in classical music and twenty-five years in liturgy. Professional musicians can’t stand liturgical music, because we never play anything upper left to lower right. It’s always “jump to here, play this twice for an interlude, no refrain between verses 3 & 4.” But as loose as church music can be, at least you play off chords and a melody line.

 

As the evening progressed in a constant back-and-forth between English and Spanish, I knew that the hardest bit was the middle—“Un dia de Bodas” at Preparation, and bilingual Eucharistic Prayer and Communion songs. After that, I breathed a sigh of relief, because I was done singing in any language. As I picked up my flute and began playing the Gounod Ave—without music—I realized:

 

I do have a second “mother tongue”—one in which I am completely, utterly fluent, one that I learned from lullabies and folk songs from my mother’s lips before I spoke my first word—one that I can and do speak awake or asleep, on piano, on flute, and in wordless vocalizations. Words are tacked on later, but melody bubbles up from an invisible well somewhere inside me. I don’t need music to play “Sunrise, Sunset.” Play me a tune, and I can learn it. Tell me a key, and I can play it. Those three men and I cannot converse in English or in Spanish—not easily, at least. Yet we do share a language. Different dialects, but the same language. That commonality changed an evening I had dreaded into something truly enjoyable.