Tracy Chapman’s guitar reminds us: Don’t give up

I saw an interview from the CBC about the guitar that Tracy Chapman used in her performance on Sunday night at the Grammy Awards. It was made in 1999 in Calgary by a female guitar maker, with a lot of care and love. Despite this, it sat in a simple music store for over a year, ignored. One might even say, unloved. Abandoned.

The guitar maker took it out, finally, and put it in a bigger store hoping someone — anyone — would buy it. Being a small, “A” size guitar, it still sat on the wall. Its quiet perfection remained unnoticed in its new home by most of the aspiring musicians who walked through. And it remained there until, one day, Tracy Chapman walked into that store.

The award-winning artist needed a smaller guitar because the bigger one she was using hurt her shoulder too much. Suddenly, one of the employees took the small guitar off the wall and plunked it into Chapman’s hands. She was pleased with the care that it was made with — and ultimately, she walked out of the store with it.

The creator of the guitar was told who bought it, and was really pleased. She thought it was fun that someone of Tracy Chapman’s stature had purchased it. But that was the last time she had heard anything about her guitar.

Decades later, this past weekend, Tracy Chapman took that same small instrument in front of millions of people around the world live on television. Singing her acclaimed classic “Fast

Car,” she strummed that simple, formerly ignored guitar, with the skill of a master. It’s perfectly tuned strings conveyed both the pain and hope of that iconic song with the entire audience enraptured.

Once the song was over, the crowd, on its feet, roared its approval. Chapman (and her singing partner Luke Combs) were all smiles.

For five minutes, that small guitar was arguably the most popular in the country — if not the world. Its simple yet powerful melodies reminded everyone who heard it of the power of music.

All of us can relate to the feeling of being unappreciated or underutilized. Of wondering if we are living up to the promise of why we were made. But as that performance Sunday night proved — even a guitar can have a happy ending.

And maybe it was destined to be that way all along.