Today I’m thankful for Aiken Drum.

11.8.2021

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Anyone who knows me knows that I love music. My day to day life most definitely has a soundtrack attached. I sing in the shower. I sing in the car. I sing in my classroom. I sing while I cook. Even when I’m quiet, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s still a song bopping through my head or whispering to my heart. It’s also safe to bet that the vast majority of the time it’s a harmony line, not the melody, that is implanted in my brain.

One of my favorite things to do is to blast a song in my car, open my sunroof, and harmonize with the lead vocalist at full voice on repeat, over and over again. Any type of music will do – but my favorite genres are 90s pop, musical theater, Christmas music or praise and worship songs. The only thing that beats this is singing live with other musicians and layering harmonies over a strong melody. Nothing beats a tight harmony. It literally feels good.

So … confession time. I secretly love the point each school year when my class has learned the Star Spangled Banner well enough that they can confidently sing it along with the announcements. When they no longer need to rely on my voice to lead them, I quietly sing a harmony line along with them. I do so softly, so I don’t mess them up, but it seriously brings me joy each morning. I do it at other times too. I can rock a decent harmony under my breath to a fair number of Koo Koo Kangaroo tunes and I harmonize with Jack Hartmann all day long (where are my teacher peeps at?!). Probably the favorite and most requested song in my classroom, though, is Aiken Drum. The kids love it because it’s a silly song about a man who lived in the moon with spaghetti hair and fried egg eyes and such. I love it because the alto line practically jumps out at you. It’s almost hard not to sing it. So, at the end of the day today when my Kindergarteners were packed up with about 2 minutes to spare before dismissal, one of them asked if we could sing Aiken Drum. My answer was clearly “yes” and we ended our day rocking out folk song style.

It was hours later before I was able to get this song out of my head today. I didn’t care though. I’m thankful that my students love to sing as much as I do and I’m thankful for the little bit of extra joy I get when I can throw a harmony line in with their melody. Nothing beats it.