An Ambitious Beginning

One of Michelle Obama’s earliest memories is the sound of plinking piano keys. To her ears, this was the sound of ambition. In the room beneath her bedroom, Michelle’s great-aunt Robbie taught piano lessons. On any given day, Michelle could hear the sounds of Robbie’s students desperately fumbling through their songs. The sound of this amateurish music made such an impression on Michelle that, at the age of four, she became ambitious, too. Michelle was certain that she wanted to learn the piano.

This was near the end of the sixties, in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. It was a time of political turmoil and social unrest, but Michelle was too young to have understood much about what was going on outside her home. Her close-knit family included her brother, Craig, who was older by two years; her father, who worked at a water filtration plant and loved the Chicago Cubs baseball team; and her mother, who was a wiz with a sewing needle and active in community fundraising.

One of the things that really brought their family together was music. At home, her father was always playing jazz records. And over at her grandfather’s place, every room had a speaker hooked up to the stereo system; at family gatherings, a cocktail of voices and horns filled the house: Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. It was her grandfather, known to everyone as “Southside,” who bought Michelle her first record: Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book.

But learning how to play music was a different story. What’s more, Robbie was stiff and strict. Her posture was impeccable. Her reading glasses always hung around her neck, threatening scrutiny. She scolded her students often. Nevertheless, Michelle was eager to win her approval.

If you’ve taken piano lessons, you know that one of the first steps is learning to find the middle C. Middle C functions like a musical landmark; knowing where it is enables you to position your hands correctly on the keys. But when you’re four years old and sitting in front of 88 keys, finding middle C is no easy task. Fortunately, on Robbie’s piano, this key was chipped, making it easy to spot.

For the most part, Michelle was a keen student and made quick progress – a little too quick, as far as Robbie was concerned. Before long, Michelle tried to skip ahead to more advanced songs in the playbook. Far from impressing Robbie, this infuriated her, and she insisted Michelle do as she was told and go one step at a time.

Then came Michelle’s first big recital. Once a year, Robbie would present her students to an audience at Roosevelt University’s music hall. Michelle put her hair in pigtails and wore a cute dress. She was ready to shine. But then, when she took her seat at the piano, she froze. There was no chipped key. Where was the middle C?

That’s when Robbie came to the rescue. She calmly walked onto the stage, reached over her shoulder like a guardian angel and pointed. Michelle could now start her recital.