OK--this is going to sound as if I'm at least a hundred years old, but really, I'm not (quite):

I grew up on a small farm in the southern Appalachians, in what I prefer to call a conservative, relatively closed, culture (most other folks like to call it backward). On my father's side I'm fifth or sixth generation Appalachian; my mother was a Cherokee, so God only knows how far back her family went in the mountains. My earliest memories are of constant music. The women sang their way through all household chores, usually selecting songs which lent a rhythmic beat to the activity (churning, sweeping, mopping, rocking babies, etc.). After the house was wired for electricity the first appliance we got was a radio. My paternal grandparents lived with us (I reckon, actually, it was we who lived with them); Gran'ma played guitar, Grampaw was a fiddler, Dad played harmonica. Everybody sang. Because all cooking was done on a wood-burning stove, the heat from which made much of the house uncomfortable during much of the of the year, we spent a great deal of time on the big front porch, telling stories and making music. We were not entertainers--we were musicians, and we were our own audience. We sang in the field, Dad sang as he kept store. Everybody in that little community sang and/or played some kind of instrument, it seems to me. We sang in church. Kids played games which, more often than not, involved singing. I lived in music as a fish lives in water, and the last thing I heard before I slept every night for several years was my mother or my grandmother singing my brother (nine years younger than I) to sleep, keeping time with the old creaky rocking chair. When I left home, I found that sometimes I was considered a bit strange and eccentric because I sing aloud, or hum, or whistle constantly. The other day I was painting a room at our church, singing aloud in time with the roller-strokes, and probably a dozen folks came in briefly, each one saying, Oh, it's you: I wondered who was doing the singing! Why live music? Because musicians and musical people get more out of life. Because music greases the wheels of just about anything at which you might be working. Because music reminds of you of the old folks, and makes your heart light by calling them back to mind.

One of our favorite ways to end a concert is to ask the audience to sing along with us on the chorus, and then ask the sound-man to bring down the stage sound gradually until we can no longer be heard over the sound system, and we become simply a part of the audience, working with them to make music which they can take home with them. I apologize for the length of this screed.