There’s some word for feeling nostalgia for a period of time or experience you’ve never had and when I listen to the music I like the most, I feel this.
Particularly the music of the 1960s and 1970s:
- Pink Floyd
- The Grateful Dead
- Joan Baez
- Bob Dylan
- Jimi Hendrix
- Led Zeppelin
- Bill Withers
- Many, many others
I especially get this when I watch live stuff on YouTube. Like just now, I’ve been stuck on YouTube watching everything from the Osborne Brothers to The Band singing “The Weight” with The Staples.
There’s some sort of bias playing out, or a cognitive covering I can’t fully appreciate, but I look at them and they look like they’re free of phones, and social media, and the like. Like they, and those in the audience, have nowhere to be.
But all of this is surely over prescriptive: I just love the way this music makes me feel. It’s beautiful.
It makes me feel connected to my childhood and my growing up in Mississippi. Makes me feel proud of where and how I grew up, too, and that’s important.
Makes me motivated to get the kids playing the guitar and the fiddle so we can sign together.