Making and Being Music
By Mark Newstetter

The sounds of the guitar came from the small speaker of the phonograph and rose through the air into the ears of a child of eight years. And though there was also a voice singing, it was the guitar that really spoke to the child. There was nothing like that sound. He wanted to It wasn't without some trepidation that his parents decided, on his 9th birthday, to present him with the object of his longing. Of course, it was nothing fancy. Just a simple nylon string 'folk' guitar. It cost $20 back in 1966. But it was the most perfect thing I'd ever held in my hands.

I can remember the first sounds I drew from the strings of that guitar. I was, at that moment, part of the continuum of music. Tapping into a part of the human essence unavailable through words. As much as listening to music enables you to go beyond the confines of literal thought, actually making music goes that much further. Music comes from us, and through us. It is at the heart of our ability to communicate sonically in a way that the spoken word is not. And of the myriad instruments we have invented to produce the vast array of tonalities which form the global culture of music, the guitar resonated within me so early in my life.

We are music makers, human beings. But music is more than something we do. It is what we are. It's all to easy in a world which defines us in material terms to think of music as something ethereal and beyond reach. But it's just the opposite. Music begins inside each of us and radiates to all. It is the expression of our natural resonance. We need only listen to the sound of our own life force to find our music.