I spent my childhood in Congo and it was there that music became my best friend. A friend who never left me anymore and who made a very deep impression on my life to come.
My mother played the guitar on the "barza" (kind of big veranda) early in the morning, when the crickets were still chirping their last nightly songs. I listened to my mum's guitar playing when the birds started twittering and I felt an huge happiness. Mum didn't know I was humming the melodies she played nor did she knew that I was awake. But Africa was not a place to sleep long: my days started with the birds and my mum's music.
My father, who is a pediatrician, played the recorder some evenings with three friends to form a quatuor. It was amazing to see the bass recorder, almost as big as I was, the tenor recorder, the alto and the soprano. Hearing them play together, sonatas from Haendel, Vivaldi, Telemann and other Baroque composers, filled me with such curiosity and pleasure, that I asked my mum at the age of four to learn me to play the soprano recorder. And I learned it quickly. My little fingers running over the wholes of the simple wooden recorder my mum found for me, trying to close or open its wholes: it filled me with joy.
Every day after school our house was transformed into a big music class. Mum had a special gift to take care about ten or more children at once: she was teaching the recorder and the guitar, while she learned others to read notes and sing correctly at the same time.
The house was filled with different instruments all playing at the same time while other children where trying to sing loudly to keep singing right. Because I was too little to take part in these music lessons, I sat on the 'barza', looking at and listening to what was happening inside: the recorder lessons in particular were demanding all my attention.
Once in bed I tried to put my little fingers on a "b" flat, an "f" or a "c" sharp. After a while I saw the marks of the wholes in my fingers and I decided that I had rehearsed enough. I fell asleep waiting for another early day with singing birds and a guitar playing mum.
