“So come what may” sings Malia Rogers on her latest single, “Family Song”. Despite its shared sentiment, it’s a little more mournful than “Que Sera Sera” but that was a song full of hope and expectation. Instead, “Family Song” is about appreciation and resilience, particularly in the face of the inevitable.
Where “Que Sera Sera” was a pleasant little song of childhood wonderment, “Family Song,” as Malia Rogers describes it, is a hymn for hard times; “an homage to the love that guides us through pain into healing.”
“I wrote this song for my grandfather John who, on a stunningly bright and snowy morning this past January, passed away surrounded by loved ones and tears and laughter,” explains Rogers. “He was brilliant, compassionate, curious; he was my pen pal, my mentor, my closest friend. I knew through our many conversations what he considered to be a ‘good death’, and I’m confident he was pleased to be at home, with the dog on the bed at his feet, music echoing through the house.”
“Losing our family’s elder was only the beginning of a hard year. I called his song ‘Family Song’ because it’s for all of us now, not just for him — it’s a distillation of the brave and vulnerable and resilient love we learned from him, and a love that gets us through painful times.”
Rogers says that her grandfather, a poetic and introspective man, as well as an avid keeper of journals—”a vital practice that he passed down to me at a very young age”—provided a major influence on her, particularly where it led her to writing music. As a result, Rogers was able to return that gift, years later, by crafting something of a legacy song for her grandfather.
“Back in the dead of winter, in quarantine in Nova Scotia, I wrote and recorded this song for him to listen to in the hospital the night before we brought him home. I wanted to reassure him what he already knew: that he had built a strong and fiercely loving family whose bond could get them through anything, including loss. I wanted him to know that our love for him and each other was his legacy, and would live on across time and distance for many generations. My mom, who was spending the night with him in the hospital, told me she knows he could hear and was listening because he smiled.
“In one of our deep kitchen-table chats months before my grandfather’s death, we talked about loss. We agreed on the idea that grief is love persevering; if we hadn’t been blessed with the gift of loving each other so much and so deeply, we wouldn’t feel the pain of grief. So, grief is love, or a product of love, and the love is rare and worthy of gratitude. That’s what this song is about, at its core.”
Rogers says that having award-winning singer-songwriter Ian Sherwood involved as producer was a natural choice that strengthened an inherently emotional, and admittedly shaky, “voice-memo of a song” into a treasured heirloom. She also hopes that the single will help others to navigate their own losses, particularly while the entire of her family are living in Novia Scotia, while Rogers finds herself in Ontario.
The single is wrapped together with a touching choice of artwork: an image of the farmhouse her grandfather and grandmother purchased just months before his passing. For Rogers, the house, which her grandparents had dubbed “Little Red”, remains a symbol of healing, strength, resilience, and legacy, especially with her grandmother carrying out their dreams of making it into a space for family and gathering.
“Losing our family’s elder was only the beginning of a hard year,” says Roger. “I called his song ‘Family Song’ because it’s for all of us now, not just for him — it’s a distillation of the brave and vulnerable and resilient love we learned from him, and a love that gets us through painful times.”