The playlist?

You want to know the playlist?

I have been asked to produce my 20th C playlist. J.... has asked me to do this and I am completely bewildered by the request. I know what he means but... I am not that sort of cat.

I prefer silence. If I am working I need silence. Music is a distraction. If I am thinking about something then music is a distraction. 

I grew up in a family where the radio was not on all day. At university I preferred to work in the library - because it was quiet there. Even now when I am in the house alone most of the time I don't have music in the background. 

"So, you don't like music?" I hear one or more of you asking this and I wonder how to answer you because I doubt you would understand. I don't want music as something there in the background.  For me, it's a very emotional thing. 

As a kitten I used to cry when my mother played a record. I would tell her, "It hurts me inside." She never understood that. I was told I was being "silly" and often sent off to my bedroom. I would sit there with my paws over my ears trying to shut the noise out.  It was not that I did not like it. It just overwhelmed me. Often it still does.

But J... has asked me for a sort of playlist from the 20thC. I suspect he is a little older than I am and I doubt my choices would be his choices. 

I have tried thinking back to things I knew in my teens - knew because I heard them played not in our house but in other places - Guide camps, church youth groups and the like. (Our pleasures back then were rather more simple and didn't involve vast sums of money - most of us had none.)

So J....here you are - not in any particular order of preference.

Blowin' in the wind - probably sung in German because that is the way I first heard it

We shall overcome - still around. It evokes powerful and often painful memories for me.

Kumbaya - often our last choice around the campfire

Sounds of silence  - that's lasted - I heard the reworked "Trump" version last year

 Bridge over troubled water - troubled indeed

Hallelujah 

Little boxes

Turn, turn, turn

The last thing on my mind

Where have all the flowers gone.

I have tried not to include any of the traditional songs (like Scarborough Fair) which became popular back then - they, like "A whiter shade of pale" (which is actually stolen from Bach), belong to another era altogether. 

And then there are things like the Missa Luba - but I am not sure that's the sort of thing J.... meant.

Now dear reader - do you know these things...do I need to say more than the title?