I'm fascinated with how songs travel across miles and cultures. Some of this can be attributed to those who have journeyed with songs and shared them with new audiences- and I'm not talking about multimillion dollar concert tours. What I find amazing is the sharing of songs in a grassroots fashion, be it through churches, coffeehouses or other venues and how those songs speak to audiences perhaps never imagined.
Though she doesn't like that I emphasize its small size, Denise comes from a small island nation. (Well, technically the nation is made up of two islands.) In fact it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's tiny; St. Kitts is an island of only 68 square miles. Yet, I continue to be surprised by the fact that many songs I would think would be unknown there are not.
Today we were driving around and listening to a new CD we picked up from Dave Moody, titled "Feels Like Home". Not to take away anything from the artist, but wouldn't you know, Denise was familiar with all of the songs except for one? Granted, there are several traditional songs but there also some originals as well as a few covers I would have thought rather obscure, such as "Feels Like Home" by Randy Newman and "You Did That For Me" by Jonnell Mosser and Pierce Pettis. I guess I thought wrong. It turns out the only song on the album she hadn't heard before was "Love at the Five and Dime" by Nanci Griffith. And she heard these songs before the internet became widely available on the island. Go figure.
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