Episode 19: Sin-Along Songs
In an earlier episode, I wrote about my musical education, starting with piano lessons at the age of six. I’ve made no secret about the fact that I truly hated learning to play the piano. I can’t even count how many times I was told by well-intentioned adults that someday, in the future, when I was an adult, I would be grateful that I could play. To this day, I don’t understand the sentiment. I’ve never, in my entire adult life, had the desire to sit down at a piano and play, not in the privacy of my own home, not at any party I’ve ever attended, not for a rapt audience, not ever. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I’ve never regretted giving up the piano. Same goes for the viola, for that matter.
The one thing I always, always, always want to do is sing. I wake up every single day with a song playing on a loop in my head. Not a song in my heart. I’m not Maria Von Trapp. But when I wake up, there’s a song rattling around in my mind. Sometimes it’s an old rock or pop song. Sometimes it’s a standard. Sometimes it’s a song from my childhood (those are the rare times when my brain switches to Russian automatically). Occasionally, it’s a fragment of a classical song or an aria, not that I could ever actually sing opera, or would ever attempt to. And if I don’t do anything to get rid of the earworm, I’ll wind up with that song in my head all day, sometimes into the next day. Once, I had “Santa Lucia” stuck in my brain for three or four days straight. This lovely Italian folk song has been recorded by Luciano Pavarotti, Alfie Boe, Marina Morozova, and countless other singers. There are also choral versions.
Here’s a link to a version with the Italian lyrics.
And here’s a link to a site where you can find the original lyrics in Italian side by side with their direct translation into English, and, even more helpfully, an English transliteration that more accurately and beautifully captures the meaning of the song.
And just for fun, here’s a cover by Elvis!
Anyway, even though I love “Santa Lucia,” after a few days, I finally had to hum it in the shower to purge it from my brain. Now that I’m writing about it, of course it will lodge itself in my brain, where it’ll live rent-free until something else takes its place.
Thinking about this condition of mine makes me think about the songs I’ve sung, as a member of my high school choir, at vocal competitions, with friends, etc. The first song I remember singing in high school choir school was an atrocious arrangement of Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park.” I was in the ninth or tenth grade, which would have made it 1980 or 1981. The song came out in 1972, so it was only eight or nine years old at the time, but to us it felt ancient even then. I’m not a huge fan of Chicago and knew next to nothing about the band at that point, but I instinctively felt bad for participating in such a lame rendition of their song. Here’s the original. I won’t subject you to any choral versions.
“Saturday in the Park” is my one and only memory of singing anything remotely resembling contemporary songs in high school choir. Not that I’m complaining. Choral arrangements of contemporary songs seem artificial and uncomfortable and just plain weird. In any case, after that first year, we got a new choir director, and his tastes in choral music didn’t include re-arranged pop songs. When Mr. B took over from Mr. S, our repertoire turned to choral music, mostly liturgical songs from the High-Church tradition, but also a few secular ones. And while I don’t remember all the songs, I do remember singing the words kyrie eleison a lot! Not the Mister Mister version, but more something like this:
Two specific “Kyries” come to mind – one we did as a choir and one I performed as a solo for a competition. The words kyrie eleison, pronounced roughly kee-ree-ay ay-lay-ee-zahn, are Latin for Lord, have mercy, and there are tons of masses and other liturgies written for choir that use the phrase. I was an alto, and the alto part of the choir “Kyrie” started on an F, which is a very comfortable note for me. One of my “core” memories is belting that first note as we began rehearsing the song, and having our director, Mr. B. stop us and, in his incredibly gentle and kind way, ask the entire alto section to tone down the first note a bit. He knew it was me, I knew it was me, we all knew it was me, but it would have never occurred to him to single out one student for criticism in front of the entire class, so he simply addressed the entire section, and we started over, without my belting this time. One of the many reasons I loved choir!
The solo “Kyrie” I sang for a competition was a different one, and I only remember the first line, mostly because it stretched out the word kyrie over eighteen notes! I’ve tried many times to find this particular Kyrie online but haven’t been able to. I practiced and practiced and practiced, and then I was singing it a’ Capella in front of three or four vocal judges. I think I got a 4/5 for my performance, which wasn’t bad at all. I didn’t get much verbal feedback, except from one judge, who told me that I needed to “animate my lovely eyes” while singing. I think I had my “lovely eyes” closed during the entire terrifying ordeal.
During my Junior and Senior years, I was also a member of my school’s jazz choir, Camerata! Before you ask, no, it was nothing like Glee! Two singing classes per day was absolute bliss, even if it meant I had to take a “zero hour” class my junior year to fit in all the classes I needed. “Zero hour” was one hour earlier than regular classes, which meant 7:00am. It was a Social Studies class, with the teacher, Mr. Sparks, ending each class by saying, “Have a happy, rewarding, educational experience for the rest of your day.” It’s really the only thing I remember from that class, other than Scott C. coming in late every morning, already stoned out of his mind, plopping down behind me, and asking in a whisper-yell if I had gum. Good times!
Our jazz choir repertoire was dominated by songs by The Manhattan Transfer. If you don’t know who The Manhattan Transfer were, I won’t bore you with the details here, other than to say they were a jazz signing quartet famous for songs such as “Route 66” and “Birdland.”
“Route 66” is literally an ode to the famous highway from Chicago and Los Angeles, which extolls the virtues of the drive and drops names of major cities along the road.
“Birdland” is all about the famous NYC jazz club, where the likes of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, for whom the club was named, Miles Davis, John Coltraine, Count Basie, and a bunch of other jazz greats played in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s a ridiculously difficult song, and I’m sure we probably did it no favors, but we had a great time trying!
One thing I realize now, in hindsight, is how little I actually understood the lyrics of the songs I sang then, especially jazz songs. I had only been in the U.S. for seven years when I graduated from high school in 1983, and though my English was fluent as far as speech, reading, and writing was concerned, jazz lyrics are a whole different thing!
In the middle of that hub
I remember one jazz club
Where we went to pat feet
Down on fifty-secon’ street
Everybody heard that word
That they named it after Bird
Where the rhythm swooped an’ swirled
The jazz corner of the world
An’ the cats that gigged in there
Were beyond compare
I sang those words. But I had no idea what “pat feet” or “cats that gigged” meant, not until years and years later. All those references to jazz greats, such as Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Miles Davis, etc., were completely lost on me. What on earth was “bop” and why was it king? Not a clue! Did it matter? Nah! I loved every single, glorious, bewildering minute of it!
Two additional songs stand out in my mind from those high school days, not because they were particularly popular, but because I got to sing them with friends, though not in the context of official classes or performances. One was “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers.
When the choir traveled to regional or state competitions, we all piled into a chartered bus, and, for the next couple of hours, everyone engaged in whatever activity made sense to them at the time. Some of us sat and chatted with friends. Some slept. Some snacked. Some made out in the back. But no matter what else was happening, invariably someone would sing out:
Old black water, keep on rolling
Mississippi moon, won’t you keep on shining on me?
And the rest of us would jump in with
I’d like to hear some funky Dixieland
Pretty Mama come and take me by the hand
By the hand (hand), take me by the hand pretty Mama
Come and dance with your daddy all night long
We could keep this up for hours and often did! We must have driven the poor, unfortunate chaperones, our director, and the bus driver completely out of their minds, but to their great credit they never said a word!
Okay, one last song. This one stands out because, for whatever reason, some friends and I sang it a lot the summer of 1982. That song was “Missing You” by Dan Fogleberg.
Is it a great song? Nope! Was it particularly meaningful to us that summer? Not at all. But here’s the thing. We could harmonize to it. Not the whole thing, just the “Ooh, I’m missing you” part. So, that’s what we did. Picture it. A bunch of high school choir nerds driving to the lake, five of us stuffed into an old VW Bug, grooving to Dan Fogleberg, splitting into four-part harmony on the chorus. Terminally uncool. One of my most cherished memories.
