Our Ancestors’ Music
2010
My grandmother Clara Lzina Barker Pugmire played the guitar. She learned to play as a young girl and became good enough to play with her brothers at community dances. Her brothers played a variety of instruments. Together they spent many evenings in the beautiful Bear Lake Valley, both in Utah and Idaho, making music for others to enjoy. Without radios, records or television, and living in rural places, music meant more to our ancestors than it might to us. They had to make their own. My grandmother often said that it helped to have music around on long, dark, winter nights. Often the community dances lasted well into the morning hours.
Even in her older years, my grandmother loved to get her hands on a guitar. She liked to repeat the stories of her youth and play a run or two before handing the guitar back to its owner. When I saw this wonderful painting, I thought of my grandmother and the joy past generations felt when they got together . . . to make music. Almost every ancestral story includes music. Music from native lands. Instruments made by hand. Heirloom instruments. Pianos, organs, violins, guitars, flutes, drums. Some primitive and some classical. Folk music. Blue grass. Worship music. Ancestral music. Oh, to hear it today.