My love and understanding for music started about nine years ago. Sure, we all loved Brittany Spears in her desperate need to find herself, Justin Timberlake as lead of ‘N Sync, and Nick Lachey with his sizzling comrades in 98 Degrees, but I am talking about a real passion and appreciation for music. Music that screams of love, heartbreak, cultural differences and the deep questions of life. Songs about life altering experiences and questioning the world and why things are the way they are. I never knew music could hold such profound meaning and intensity, that it really meant something until that normal day in eighth grade.
My friends, Bailey Duffy, Brittany Childress and I were walking down the hallway making our way to music class, the most dreaded class for us all. Bailey was a tall, brown headed girl. She had radiant, pale skin and vast bright blue eyes. Her personality sang of grace and humility. Brittany was a kind of beauty all her own. Her highlighted brown hair cascaded down her narrow face where her huge dark blue eyes sat full of mystery. She was charming with a looming scorn ready to jump out of her throat at anyone who would test her. And we were the fearless leaders of eighth grade, top dogs, making our way to the slaughter.
As we entered music class, there she was, sitting at her desk searching out her next prey. Her name was Mrs. Walmack and she was a sight to see. She was a middle-aged adult with eyes hidden behind massive black-rimmed glasses that would drill a hole right through your skull and lips that were blood red, ready to kill with every word she spoke. She had a high screeching voice that always made my skin crawl when she spoke. She hated Bailey, Brittany, and I mainly because we were cheerleaders and would invariably get called out of her class for our extracurricular activity. She would constantly call us out and humiliate us in front of the class by instructing us to call our mothers for all to hear simply for laughing at a joke made by another classmate or because we did not raise our hand when we spoke. Eventually, my mother memorized the number and stopped answering.
On this particular day, after Mrs. Walmack had completed yelling with her high pitched voice at every wide-eyed student, we started an introduction into classic musicals. Mrs. Walmack rolled out the television on a cart and stated that we would be watching West Side Story. The whole class erupted into moans and groans that sounded as if a thunder storm had just struck our classroom. Bailey and Brittany looked at me and rolled their eyes knowing that today would be a difficult class period. Immediately, she calmed the class down with her voice of doom as her big red lips parted and a black hole opened with an unbearable shrill that silenced us. As quickly as the thunderous objections started, it stopped. No one wanted to endure the wrath of Mrs. Walmack; it was worse than most people got at home. She quickly explained that participating in viewing the musical would be ten percent of our grade as well as crucial for the next several weeks of class. At this announcement, everyone mendaciously participated in viewing the film.
Mrs. Walmack set up the television cart and dimmed the lights so that the white brick walls around us looked as though we were stranded in a dark cell of a prison. The opening credits started and I became instantly disheartened about the hour or more of entertainment ahead of me. The musical was presented in black and white with no vivid colors to help my imagination. What was Mrs Walmack thinking? This was, of course, the twenty-first century and not only did people in the twenty-first century not watch old, boring movies, they especially did not watch old, boring musicals. Brittany Childress leaned over and whispered what a joke this was and I was anticipating to agree with every negative comment that protruded from her mouth. However, as my mind opened to what was really happening on the screen, it was as if some invisible veil was being removed from my eyes. This was not just a movie or songs in a movie, this was a monumental moment in my life where music, dancing, and acting were all combined into one beautiful story. It was then, as I watched this modern day Romeo and Juliet, that my heart melted. I looked around hoping that no one would notice the softness of my demeanor and how a little smile had extended across my face. This musical was incredible.
The story was set in New York, in the early 1950’s. It represents two different social class groups, who are portrayed in two different teenage street gangs. A blue collar, working class gang called the Jets and a poor gang from Puerto Rico called the Sharks. The story centers around Maria, the sister of the Sharks leader, and Tony, who is a member of the Jets. Tony falls in love with Maria and throughout the story there is the dilemma of Maria being, not only ethnically different, but also socially different from Tony. The predicament which they find themselves in leads to fights between the gangs, heartbreak, disunity, and in the end death. As I watched these events unfold right before my eyes I was transfixed. How could music break through the boundaries of normality and allow an experience such as the one I was encountering. It was as if with every song and dance move, I was there. I was feeling every emotion that every character had to take on. Maria, as she was caught in this predicament of loving someone she was supposed to despise just because he was a white, blue-collared Jet. Tony, his love for Maria so evident and so profound that no ethnical or social boundary could stop him from loving her which resulted, in the end, with his death by Maria’s brother. The conflict constricting the two gangs, the same conflict that we have been dealing with and what I believe we will always deal with, is the beautiful problem of diversity that will always and forever exist in our world. It is an exquisiteness that we must embrace. I could not help myself from breaking down and completely loosing it, like I had some emotional instability taking place inside me and it had to escape. Bailey and Brittany both stared at me with utter disbelief as I grabbed a tissue and asked if I could be excused for a simple moment to put myself back together. I looked straight into Mrs. Walmack’s eyes, pleading for her to let me go just for a second and it was like I could really see her. See that she understood me at the moment and knew what I was feeling. My heart seemed to have softened of my hatred toward her, and it was this very barrier that music could break.
As the words of the songs of West Side Story come back to me even now, it’s life changing. How Maria felt coming to America, how Tony felt meeting and falling for Maria, and how Maria’s brother felt about Tony seeing Maria. I am amazed at how music transcends racial tension, hatred, violence, social classes and it can some how bring us together. It breaks the confinements of what and who we think we are and can make us one as a people. Music expresses so many emotions, feelings, and thoughts that can not be put into words, and somehow we can all understand and relate. It’s an elegance worth refining and sharing. Simply put, music is beauty that we can all see.
