(Song of) Affinity (1984)
Genre: Rock/jazz ballad
This song represents the confluence of two interests of mine: world travel—particularly experiences I had in Eastern Europe in my late 20’s—and my study of word roots and etymology.
The Travel Stream
My first trips overseas took me to Czechoslovakia with my brother in 1982 and to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland with my Dad in 1984. Our travel was chiefly genealogical—no one in our family had been back to the “old country” since our great grandparents emigrated some four generations ago.
There was otherwise no good reason to make any of these places a tourist destination. To be sure, traveling there in 1984 often felt like Orwell’s book. All three Soviet-bloc countries were locked in the vise of post-Stalinist communist rule. We learned how people lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but it wasn’t a place for a good time.
While we met good and courageous people there, travel was challenging, the cities dark, and the landscape drab. The public persona of most strangers we met on the street was disinterested (sometimes downright unfriendly). (Margaret Atwood spent time in similar locales at roughly the same time and we all know what kind of dystopia it inspired in her.)
When we chanced to meet a few stray North Americans passing through, they asked why we didn’t go someplace more fun. We were on a mission to learn new things about family and life, but we occasionally asked ourselves the same question.
We spent a lot of time waiting at intentionally intimidating border crossings.
I wrote the words and music to “Song of Affinity” when I returned home, under the sway of those experiences: sitting at menacing checkpoints and pondering the shifting politics/allegiances of all those closely packed and historically warring European nations. The almost inconceivable fall of the Berlin Wall was still several years away.
Now, these words resonate even more for me when I consider the plight of those waiting at our own borders and the highly politicized nature of the debate surrounding it.
The Etymology Stream
I learned that the root of the word affinity came from the Latin ad- (to) and -finis- (border). Early uses of the word expressed the sense of being related to another person by marriage, not blood. To have “affinity” with someone, then, was not only to know them well, but to be figuratively“on their borders.” I liked that image.
The song is an extended metaphor on these themes. I’m still not sure whether it’s about interpersonal relations or international affairs, but that ambiguity appealed to me in the first place. Admittedly, there are some straining rhymes here, but it’s an experiment I don’t regret.
The song had a rock ballad feel as I originally wrote it, but it was played in public for the first time at Dazzle in Denver by gifted jazz musicians. We performed it as part of a Gift of Jazz class called “Creativity and Originality in Jazz” I took from local vibraphonist Greg Tanner Harris.
The song premiered on Tuesday, March 25, 2014 with my daughter, Anna, singing lead vocals, her friend Marty Garfield-Levine on violin, Greg Tanner Harris on vibes, Josh Quinlan on tenor sax, Charlie Parker Mertens on bass, Alejandro Castaño on bass, and yours truly on piano.
I wanted to incorporate strings into the piece, so I wrote a new melody for the violin. That part has been retained for this latest version.