We got some really sad news in the DJ B household this week as Miss B's grandpa died. Since I'm a big fan of using music as a coping mechanism, I immediately asked Miss B to pick out a library CD that she thought her grandpa would like. I handed her a pile of 8 library CDs (yes...we're really backlogged) and she scrutinized each one of them very carefully before handing me a Celine Dion CD. As I started to put it in the player, Miss B changed her mind, telling, me, "No. This one" as she handed me Queen Latifah's "Trav'Lin' Light."
DJ B looked through the CD booklet and smiled, then ran to me, saying, "I want that snake. I want that snake right now." I'm not sure what she wanted, so I changed the subject and asked her, "Do you think grandpa would like this music?" She said, "yeah." I asked if she liked it and she also said, "yeah."
As we listened to this lovely CD of jazzy R & B influenced pop and standards, Miss B climbed on some chairs and then lounged a bit before settling in with an LL Bean catalog. She quietly listened to the music while reading the Christmas catalog. Later she moved to the floor with some pens and started to draw some pictures. She held one up to show me, saying, "This is for Grandpa...because he's sad and sick." She then grabbed a blanket and said, "snuggle me up. snuggle me in."
Who would have thought that the soothing vocals and classic sounds of Queen Latifah (covering Nina Simone, Peggy Lee and others) would be such a fitting tribute to Miss B's departed grandpa? And, yeah, I think he would have liked this music...just as DJ B predicted.
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