my abuela is extremely nostalgic about the music she listened to when she was a teenager in the mid-1960s. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Supremes. sources say she even danced The Twist but those claims won’t be confirmed or denied.
(psst I bet she did.)
if you were a teen in the 1970s, then you might know all the words to songs by Fleetwood Mac, The BeeGees, or ABBA. or every tune in the Sinatra catalog if you remember the 50s and 40s.
I’m not sure why this is so but there’s this tight bond for life between music and memory and emotion.
I notice this acutely among people with dementia at the memory care facility I visit a few streets over from me once a week to play songs. they can’t remember the names and faces of family members but they seem to have a maximum recall of the melodies and words from when they were young. their typical day unfolds with a predictable rhythm but they instantly are brought back to their past through music.
when I asked the music therapist there about it, she told me about a phenomenon called the reminiscence bump. she explained how people often disproportionately recall memories from when they were young teens to maybe their twenties or thirties.
maybe it’s because music from an earlier period in our lives is entangled with particular life experiences, like nervous first dates and rushed first kisses, unforgettable high school dances, fun times just hanging out with friends, weddings, stuff like that.
I don’t really know. but when I think about the lifetime of stories trapped inside the minds of the people at the memory care center, I can’t help but feel that the measure of life is not what is lost, it’s what remains, and the musical residue of their lives means everything.
I sang this there last night along with the few Beatles songs I can play, plus a couple of Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly tunes (which I love). it’s called bang bang and I played it because, I don’t know, it’s kinda got a haunting vibe. hope you like.
cookie nieves 
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