The story of the Music Evening

The story of the music evening has its roots in a time before the internet, cell phones, computers, or even facsimile machines. So, you will excuse me digressing a little and telling you a tale of two paths that eventually made the music evenings possible.

Tale 1: The love of music

Growing up, our home was filled with music and song. My mother and father sang together beautifully. My mother played the guitar and my grandfather, who lived with us while I was little, played the ‘traporrel’ (pump organ). Every evening at prayer time after dinner we would heartily sing together and make music.

At a young age, I learned to play the electric organ and guitar, often playing and singing my Mom’s favourites for her.

Because our family was actively involved in the church, it meant we also sang and played musical instruments in the church.

We always had a radio gramophone and a collection of old ’78 records of popular music, mostly from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, that my mother and I used to sing to.

My own music collection started in earnest in my early working years when I befriended Cecile Kirchner, who at the time headed up the record library at the SABC. When the SABC started migrating to CDs in the ’70s, I got hundreds of well cared for, good quality LPs from her that are still in my collection. I wasn’t picky, I took everything she was happy to pass on and that broadened my appreciation and love for a broad spectrum of music.

Of course, when you have lots of records to play, you need things to play them on. And that is part of my next tale.

Tale 2: The love of things that make music loud

It was at school that I was first diagnosed with Gadgetitus, something that has plagued me for my entire adult life. By the time I finished school the affliction had forced me into a career in electronics at SAA. I was lucky enough to work with Morris Bay, a keen pianist (he had two grand pianos at home!), who built sound and speaker systems for a hobby. His musical ear and technical knowledge taught me about quality of reproduced sound.

About that time, I was also introduced to my lifelong friend Johan Benade, an audiophile of note. Johan sparked my interest in high-quality audio equipment – the things that make music loud (and beautiful). Over the years, we have continued you share our love for music and the sounds our audio systems produce. As an aside, we both passionately believe that there is no finer sound reproduction than that from good vinyl.

Eventually – the music evenings!

In 2004, I invited two very good Toastmasters friends for dinner at my home. Lynette Evler, who has since retired to a small town in the middle of nowhere, and our beloved friend Adri, who passed recently. We shared a love for music, had things that made it loud and found it goes best with great company. Adri suggested we do it more often and so the music evenings were born.

The early music evenings were just about music we could dance to, and everyone brought their own music – on LP, 7-single, cassette tape, CD, or DVD, or iPod. Richard even used to bring his own minidisk player, which we connected to my sound system! Once I installed a projector, we sat down to watch some of the music and the evenings became a little more structured. The next big change was the themes, which I think may have started about 10 years ago. We have little information on the music played in those early sessions as no records were kept.

Over time, as the internet became more accessible, more and more people were choosing music videos, resulting in the format we use now. As you all now send your music to me, we have very good records of our music evenings since 2016.

Music is a vital part of my life. I can’t imagine being without it for a single day. And you are the people that teach me about music, make me laugh about music, make me love it even more. Long may it continue.

Here’s to a future of music evenings with you!

Errol