The Music in Our Genes

Before leaving Beijing, my maternal grandparents came to spend some precious time with us.

Grandpa loves playing the erhu, and its melodies are always so beautiful and expressive. Whenever he hears a piece of music he likes, he can quickly work it out and play it on his instrument. Grandma joins in, humming along and accurately singing the notes of the melody.

Then Grandpa carefully takes out his notebook and pen and writes the music down using numbered musical notation, his handwriting neat and precise. Grandma tells me that over the past several decades, he has transcribed thousands of pieces like this.

Grandpa is a force to be reckoned with. When he decided to quit smoking, he managed to give up a habit he had kept for decades in just one week. Once he sets his mind to something, he gets it done.

Listening to the sound of his erhu, I picked up the instrument he had given me and started learning to play. To my amazement, I could work out the melodies and play them, too.

Now I understand. My good ear for music comes from Grandma, while my ability to hear a melody and reproduce it on an instrument comes from Grandpa. They tell me that my great-grandparents on my mother's side could also play melodies from memory, without looking at sheet music.

Isn't the power of genetics amazing?

No wonder Mom sometimes feels a little envious. She didn't inherit the musical gift, but she has become a wonderful writer herself.

Perhaps writing and music are simply different ways for us to express ourselves. In the end, we are all fortunate to have found our own ways of giving voice to the world within us.