Do you see these? These are my family heirlooms. The shiny wood mandolin is mine, gifted to me by my beloved Mr T. The little banjolin next to it was my Mum’s, I also have another even older little family one, but there was not room on the chair. So these are my heirlooms. The little banjolin had a broken drum, which has been so wonderfully repaired by Scott at Treble and Bass Music in Mt Barker, and it comes with me sometimes to my lessons with the lovely Erica (patience personified) at You Can Play Music, where she makes it sing and dance and just sound wonderful!
I am nowhere near making either of them sing yet, but this year, which has been a really hard one, so far from my Mum, she in Victoria where the Covid was running rampant, such a worry for me, then me here in Adelaide where the Covid looked like it might just get free again, such a worry for her. So it has been nice for me to be learning (very slowly and awkwardly) this instrument that she played so beautifully as a girl.
I have been trying to send her some audio or videos of me playing, but unfortunately they seem to all arrive with no sound, so I am a trying this way as she is a dedicated reader of this blog.
This first one Mum is on your banjolin, it is called Lullaby.
This second one is on my mandolin and is called the 12 bar blues, which I play with Erica, and it sounds so much better when her very wonderful playing lifts my tentative plucking!
So there you have it Mum, if indeed they have loaded, because they did not seem to be. For the girl who played this banjo, Sylvia Kathleen, who went on to become my dear Mum.
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