Can you hear it? On the radio “Oh, Holy Night!” soars. On the IPod there’s Mary J. Blige. Can you hear the rocking tune by the Decemberists? (They’ll be back on tour next month). Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma and brings shivers to the spine and tears to the eyes to millions on You Tube. Can you hear it?

If there’s anything that marks my year, it is music. Whether in churches, theaters, homes, or on the airwaves, music carries the mood. But it takes no holiday, no brightly wrapped CD, or even an MP3 download. All it takes is an entertainment section, priming ideas of the next Friday night or flickered memory. I can still remember hearing Bing Crosby singing White Christmas when I was seven years old. Or Nat King Cole, suddenly seasonal, as I set up the crèche my father made.

Some spend their spare time year round so that we can enjoy a song. There’s the DJ, VJ, or the radio host. There are the composers, musicians, singers, and production crew. There are people like Dylan Locke whose life is bringing music to others. Some such gifts arrive by invitation, or the lilt of a tune back-grounding a TV show… And then I’m off, enjoying the melody whether pop, rock, blues, whatever. I’m “Waiting on the World to Change” and buoyed knowing, even at my most discourage moment, someone else is waiting too. The song speaks to me.

What’s that song? It’s Grace Potter and the Nocturnals on Gray’s Anatomy, or a late night show. In love songs, Potter waxes poetic. She grabs me and holds me till I can’t stop humming “Apologies,” even in the shower at the gym. In rollicking rowdies you think shes morphed a blend of Bonnie Raitt meets Mellisa Etheridge. The gift of music can sneak up on me as I drive, or work. It powers chores done at fast-calorie-burn to my inner Springsteen.

Music is potentially sublime. It transports me beyond the moment and into new creativity or cascading memories. There’s that moment during Vivaldi that hits an emotion so sweet you can feel it. And music calms the spirit so meditative moments can restore.

Music heals, as Dave Matthews taught us when his band, along with John Mayer, Phil Vasser and Nas all lifted our spirits at Lane Stadium this past September. Music provokes sing-alongs, or builds community, as we learn from Bobby Parker, whose blues his many friends in the NRV enjoy. One night, at Lefty’s Main Street Grille, we lost power to a thunderstorm. The food service had to end, but restaurant goers stayed on in the dark to hear Bobby play. One warm summer night someone at Lefty’s said they loved watching my husband and I as we listened to a set of Bobby’s music. We were both smiling through it all, the man said. That’s the music coming right back in the only way we know how to express it. Bobby brought another gift of music when he introduced Blacksburg to The Old Ceremony, from Chapel Hill, not once, but twice bringing them to our town, so we could enjoy what he loves. We now treasure this band too.

I got another gift of music from our neighbors, the Shumsky’s, who recently gave us tickets to Musica Viva. It was a gift wrapped up in Dvorak, Janacek, and Ludwig. Somehow thanks are not enough. The Blacksburg Master Chorale recently perfomed Magnificat. I couldn’t go, but I can imagine it. Chorale members work all year so that listeners thrill as the voices sail.

In churches members are transported by choirs lifting their voices, and pianists whose fingers rhapsodize faith right into our being. We savor listening to pianist Jared Gibbs’ jazz rendition of traditional hymns, or poignant prelude. And we feel spring early in Goldie Terrell’s beautiful flute duets. Our church choir members spend their spare time that we may delight in their songs. And for that, I am in awe.

Whether its Scott Perry at Chateau Morrissette or Bob Margolin (wherever he might play), a weekend becomes something else when they are here. As the sun fades over Brush Mountain, it’s really the dawn for music. Nearly every night there’s music somewhere in the Burg, or its surrounds. Find it. Delight in it. Let it grab, transport and change you. And after it’s made your year, pay it forward. You’ll find a way. This new year, I know I will.

Kathryn Welch is an industrial-organizational psychologist and free-lance writer from Blacksburg