{the audience}

 

We take our music seriously over here, so it wasn't a surprise that Mateo took to it strongly as well, even when he was an infant. I could tell a song interested him by how shockingly still and quiet he suddenly became as he took it all in. And when he was old enough to talk, he wasted no time making song requests from the backseat. Maybe all kids do this, but it seems my son takes it to another level, asking to hear the same song over and over and over again. Somedays, hearing "his song" is the first thing he wants to do. We rarely (if ever in fact) listen to kids' music in my car. To be honest, I can't stand most of it, and if an adult song isn't inappropriate, I'd much rather listen to that anyway. 

Mateo's taste runs the gamut from rock to reggae, from rap to folk. His latest little song obsession is this one by Meshell Ndegeocello from her newest album Devil's Halo. He's enthralled by the crashing, throbbing beat especially at the end of the song. Often I hear him (and Nico) repeating the boom-crash-boom-boom beat without the song even being on.

So last week, Mateo decided he had to take this song to the stage. One evening he called me to Nico's room to announce that he and Nico had formed a band called The Rocking and that they were about to perform, and did I want to buy a ticket? My goodness yes, I said. He then told me he needed his star necklace on and he needed to be shirtless because "that's what rockstars do." Where did he learn that?? So interestingly enough Mateo's version is a lot more metal than soul. There was a lot of thrashing, while Nico kept looking at his brother like, "Okay, Dude, where we going with this?" I tried to explain that there's this thing called a melody, but he wasn't having it. All the day's pent up energy needed to go into the performance. That's what rockstars do.