I
tried to get a good photograph of yesterday’s solar eclipse but I was
unsuccessful.If you live in a cocoon
and don’t know, yesterday we in the United States had a total solar eclipse.I tried to get photograph but I could not get any of the solar eclipse worthy
glasses that I could use to filter out the radiation, ultra violet light, and
infrared rays.You can read about such
glasses here.
In
2017, the last solar eclipse in the local area, I was able to use the glasses over
my camera phone and filter out the obscuring rays.Yesterday I tried taking pictures with just
the phone—I pointed the phone in the general direction of the sun without
looking into it and snapped—but all I got was a ball of flame with some weird
rays or odd shaped sun.Here are some
examples.These have all been photo
edited to try to make distinct the passing moon.
I
think there is a passing object in front of the sun, but it’s not very
distinct.If you want to see the neat
pictures I took of the solar eclipse in 2017, I shared them on this blog post.
If
you want to see video of yesterday's actual, full solar eclipse you can
see it in this YouTube clip.
All
this eclipse talk reminded me of a song by Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Tyler has a very distinct husky voice, which I think perfectly fits what this might
be called a torch song.The voice exudes the pain of the subject.
A
little history on “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”It was a song written by Jim Steinman, who was the composer of most of those great songs that the performer Meat Loaf
recorded.Steinman composed lots of great hits, but
“Total Eclipse of the Heart may be his biggest.I think it was so big because of the perfectly sung performance from
Bonnie Tyler.Her distinct voice
elevates this song to something special.According to Meat Loaf, he was supposed to record the song but the deal with
Steinman fell through.He might have
done a fine job singing it, but I can’t imagine it would have been better than
Bonnie’s performance.
The
song was recorded in 1983, spending four weeks on the charts as number
one.I did not know Bonnie Tyler is
Welch.Her voice sounds so American
country.Some lyrics.
One
of the tragedies of the Coronavirus is the death of Lee Konitz who passed away from the contagion last week on April 15th.He was 92.Konitz was a jazz legend, one of the remaining artists from the bebop
and cool jazz styles of the forties, fifties, and sixties.The NY Times had a wonderful obituary.Let me pull a few quotes.First the facts:
Lee Konitz, a prolific
and idiosyncratic saxophonist who was one of the earliest and most admired
exponents of the style known as cool jazz, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He
was 92.
Next,
what made him great:
Mr. Konitz initially
attracted attention as much for the way he didn’t play as for the way he did.
Like most of his jazz contemporaries, he adopted the expanded harmonic
vocabulary of his fellow alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the leading figure in
modern jazz. But his approach departed from Parker’s in significant ways, and
he quickly emerged as a role model for musicians seeking an alternative to
Parker’s pervasive influence.
Where modern jazz in the
Parker mold, better known as bebop, tended to be passionate and virtuosic, Mr.
Konitz’s improvisations were measured and understated, more thoughtful than
heated.
“I knew and loved Charlie
Parker and copied his bebop solos like everyone else,” Mr. Konitz told The Wall
Street Journal in 2013. “But I didn’t want to sound like him. So I used almost
no vibrato and played mostly in the higher register. That’s the heart of my
sound.”
Although some musicians
and critics dismissed Mr. Konitz’s style as overly cerebral and lacking in
emotion, it proved influential in the development of the so-called cool school.
But while cool jazz, essentially a less heated variation on bebop, was popular
for several years — and some of its exponents, notably the baritone saxophonist
Gerry Mulligan and the trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, both of whom he
sometimes worked with, became stars — Mr. Konitz for most of his career was a
musician’s musician, admired by his peers and jazz aficionados but little known
to the general public.
At
his best, Lee Konitz seems to put out a dream like melody and rhythm.As I’ve grown older, I appreciate it more so
that the hard bebop sounds where you sometimes can’t pick out the melody.Let’s start with this lovely tune, “When You’re
Smiling.”
Personnel:
Lee Kontiz- Alto Sax, Billy Bauer- Guitar, Henry Grimes- Bass, Dave
Bailey-Drums.
Here
in “Topsy” he joins Warne Marsh who is on tenor sax.The subtle distinction between the two saxes,
which at times are interweaving, is what makes this so interesting.The contrast is subtle.Personnel: Lee Konitz (alto sax), Warne Marsh
(tenor sax), Billy Bauer (guitar), Oscar Pettiford (bass), Kenny Clarke (drums)
Konitz
doesn’t hit you over the head with style.He’s so subdued.Here is a live
piece, “Just Friends,” with Knonitz coming in at the 1:50 mark.Personnel: Lee Konitz (alto sax), Art Farmer (fluegelhorn),
Ake Persson (trombone), Pim Jacobs (Piano), Stu Martin (drums).
Here
in an interview, Lee articulates what makes beautiful music for him.
Finally
a lovely ballad, “Lover Man,” with Lee on alto sax and Paul Bley on
piano.
That
might be the quintessential Lee Konitz piece.Beautiful music, indeed.Eternal
rest in peace, Mr. Konitz.
Last
week Matthew had the croup which caused him to miss two days of school. This is the second time he’s gotten it. I posted on it some three years ago, here. I’m not familiar with the croup, and this is
what Wikipedia says:
Croup, also known as
laryngotracheobronchitis, is a type of respiratory infection that is usually
caused by a virus. The infection leads to swelling inside the trachea, which
interferes with normal breathing and produces the classic symptoms of
"barking" cough, stridor, and a hoarse voice Fever and runny nose may
also be present. These symptoms may be mild, moderate, or severe. Often it
starts or is worse at night. It normally
lasts one to two days.
Apparently
Matthew is susceptible to it since he’s now gotten it twice in a few years. When he woke up Thursday he was
having trouble breathing, so my wife took him to the emergency room. Wikipedia says more:
Croup is a relatively
common condition that affects about 15% of children at some point. It most
commonly occurs between 6 months and 5 years of age but may rarely be seen in
children as old as fifteen. It is slightly more common in males than females.
It occurs most often in autumn.
Well,
he’s older than five and it’s not autumn.
It’s now five days, and it has not gone away, but then he’s not had
fever or a runny nose. He does get a
burning sensation in his throat.
When
he missed school and word got around his class that he had gone to the hospital,
his classmates were all concerned. One
of the girls in his class called him to check on him and they were on the phone
for 45 minutes! Only to be interrupted
because it was getting toward dinner time.
What a cute conversation. He had
the phone on speaker and I was in the next room and caught a few snippets. (I wasn’t trying to listen, truly.) But I did catch that she had prayed for him
when she heard, which I found absolutely adorable. I love the fact that he goes to Catholic
school, and I can’t imagine that from another child in public school. Matthew it seemed did most of the
talking. I guess the laryngitis did affect
him when it comes to chattering. He’s
such a chatter box, but he’s got to learn in a conversation to let the girl say
a few more things. Then he pulled out
his harmonica and started playing “a song he wrote.” That was so funny. He also took out his guitar (which he had
gotten at Christmas) and played one of his choir songs for her. I think he impressed her.
Here’s
a recent picture of Matthew in his choir robe with a few members of the
children’s choir. He’s the only boy in
the children’s choir and feels perfectly comfortable with that.
Looks like he may develop into quite a lady’s man. ;)
This post gives me so much joy. I have always felt Matthew has musical talent. He has always had a talent to pick up a song’s tune and remember the lyrics. The children’s choir at church is something he has always wanted to do, but he had to wait until third grade to participate. Well, this year he started third grade and Wednesday night was the first practice. The musical director thought his voice wonderful, so wonderful that she had him lead the Alleluia at his very first Sunday Mass with the choir.
I was able to film him at yesterday’s Mass. Here he is leading the Alleluia.
Unfortunately
the video is not sharp enough to see Matthew singing. The first recitation is Matthew solo, and I
think you can hear how sweet his voice is.
When the entire congregation responds with the second and third recitations
unfortunately you can hear an ugly male voice in the forefront of the voices. He was near my phone and I’ll have another
word on him at the end.
But
I also filmed the entire chorus during two of their hymns. First, the offertory hymn, “Open My Eyes,
Lord.”
That’s
Matthew with the white shirt with the pink sleeves. That’s the musical director playing piano,
the younger children of the choir toward the front, and the older in the
back.
Here
during the recessional hymn, “Though the Mountains May Fall.”
The
kids are wonderful, and the music director, Debbie Williams, is great with the
kids. You don’t hear it with the
children’s choir, but she has a wonderful voice. I think she’s opera trained.
Now
back to that ugly man’s voice in the Alleluia.
I must confess. That was me, and
I’m very embarrassed about it. I’ve
said, there are two types of Italian men, those that can sing and those that
think they can sing. I’m ashamed to say
I’m of the second type obviously. I don’t
realize how bad I actually sound until I hear it played back. Matthew has been making fun of me ever since
we heard the recordings.
We
are now in the holiest week of the year.
Sunday was Palm Sunday, and we head into the Easter Tridium. I wanted to offer this beautiful Easter chant,
Victimae paschali laudes, for your listening pleasure and hopefully inspire you to strive for greater
holiness this coming weekend.
Of
course I’ll have to provide some background.
Victimae paschali laudes, literally “Praise to the Paschal Victim,” is sung
in chant—monophonic and unaccompanied—with an evolving melody. It was written in the eleventh century and
its authorship is in dispute, attributed to at least four people. Technically the chant is a sequence, which
means it’s set as part of a liturgical celebration, in this case for Easter
Sunday celebration. Apparently even some
Protestant denominations, such as Lutherans, preserved it for their
celebrations as well.
First
listen to the hymn and I’ll go through the melody after.
Here
are the lyrics, copied from Wikipedia.
(1) Victimae paschali
laudes [8 syllables]
immolent Christiani. [7]
(2) Agnus redemit oves: [7]
Christus innocens Patri [7]
reconciliavit [6]
peccatores. [4]
(3) Mors et vita duello [7]
conflixere mirando: [7]
dux vitae mortuus, [6]
regnat vivus. [4]
(4) Dic nobis Maria, [6+1]
quid vidisti in via? [7]
Sepulcrum Christi
viventis, [8]
et gloriam vidi
resurgentis: [10]
(5) Angelicos testes, [6+1]
sudarium, et vestes. [7]
Surrexit Christus spes
mea: [8]
praecedet suos in
Galilaeam. [10]
(6) [Credendum est magis
soli [8]
Mariae veraci [6]
Quam Judaeorum Turbae
fallaci.] [10]
(7) Scimus Christum
surrexisse [8]
a mortuis vere: [6]
tu nobis, victor Rex,
miserere. [10]
[Amen.] [Alleluia.] [6]
Let’s
look at the construction of the hymn. This
appears to be some dispute on how you arrange the stanzas when you look across
the internet for the lyrics. I would
arrange it as above into seven stanzas. First
note that stanza six is in brackets because it is often eliminated from a
performance. Also the “Amen” and “Alleluia”
were added to the hymn later as part of its use in liturgy.
Each
line of a stanza has four, six, seven, eight, or ten syllables. I’ve listed the number of syllables off to
the right of each line. Setting aside
the initial stanza for now, you can see that the stanzas two and three are a
matching set, four and five match, and six and seven match. The two concluding lines of stanzas two and
three both contain six and four syllables, which add up to ten, which matches
the concluding lines of stanzas four, five, six. and seven. This means that all stanzas except the first
end with ten syllables, whether from a single line or the sum of the last two. Stanzas two through five all have their first
two lines with seven syllables. Four and
five actually contain six syllables in their first lines but the melody adds an
extra syllable by repeating the last in the line. All of this has the effect of creating unity,
despite what appears to be several melodies throughout. More on the melodies further down.
The
rhyme scheme is also interesting. Here’s
how I map the ending rhymes, with the stanza number following in parentheses:
So
stanzas two through five are quatrains, while the two concluding stanzas are triplets. If you take stanzas one and two together you
have an interlocking rhyme scheme of As and Bs.
Stanzas three, four, and five are quatrains of couplets, with the fifth
stanza bringing back the A rhyme (“es”) from the beginning. So stanzas one through five also project a
sense of interlocking. The final two stanzas
of triplets provide a wonderful sense of conclusion.
So
what does this mean to the musical melody?
I hear the hymn as having three melodies, each varying on its
predecessor, concluding in the climaxing triplets. First stanza serves as an introduction which leads
into the first melody in stanzas two and three.
Notice how the penultimate syllable is of a longer note in the lines of those
stanzas. Stanzas four and five have a similar melody
but subtly different because I think the lines are of different length. The third melody are formed from the triplets
again being of different length. But are
they of different length? The first line
of eight syllables borrows one from the second line, so in effect they could be
seen as two lines of seven syllables.
And the last line of ten could be broken up into two lines of four and
six, thereby matching stanzas two through five.
It’s only because of the rhyme scheme that causes us to envision those
stanzas as triplets.
All
this creates a marvelous interconnecting sounds and line lengths to form a
harmonious whole. My concluding thought
is that the absence of accompaniment forces the composer to craft in such an
elaborate fashion. I don’t think you see
this very often in modern song writing.
These
In Memoriam posts are usually too late.
If you’ve heard of rock ‘n roll, by now you’ve heard that Chuck Berryhas
died at the age of 90. If you think rock
‘n roll is special, then Chuck Berry is the most consequential pop musician of
the last 65 years. Chuck passed away on
Saturday, March 18th at a ripe old age. From Billboard:
Chuck Berry, the singer,
songwriter and guitar great who practically defined rock music with his
impeccably twangy hits “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Memphis,” “My
Ding-a-Ling” and “Sweet Little Sixteen,” has died. He was 90.
The singer/songwriter,
whose classic “Johnny B. Goode” was chosen by Carl Sagan to be included on the
golden record of Earth Sounds and Music launched with Voyager in 1977, died
Saturday afternoon, St. Charles County Police Department confirmed. The cause
of death was not revealed.
During his 60-plus years
in show business, Berry in 1986 became one of the first inductees into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. He entered The Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame in
’85 and that year also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
He performed in 1979 for
President Jimmy Carter at the White House, landed at No. 6 on Rolling Stone’s
list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” and trademarked his stage
showmanship with his famous “duck walk.”
John Lennon once said,
“If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck
Berry.’” He paved the way for such music legends as the Rolling Stones, the
Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Band, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Eric Clapton,
AC/DC, Sex Pistols and Jerry Lee Lewis, among many others.
Every
single Rock band can trace their roots to Berry. He was idolized by the Beatles and the Stones
and I can’t think of a Rock musician who didn’t revere him. Let’s start his retrospective with a song
that shows all the elements of Berry’s music, “Maybelline.”
First
listen to that introductory guitar lick.
It’s neither pretentious nor gaudy, simple and yet distinct. From there the guitar moves right into the
melody over a thumping blend of rhythm and blues beat and country western
intonation. The guitar riff is his
signature contribution. Add his poetic
use of diction and deft articulation—here the verse at twice the tempo of the
chorus—and you have Chuck Berry. Here
you have Rock and Roll at its purist form.
One can see how he took America by storm. He crossed all sorts of racial and musical
boundaries. And he was prototypical American
and proud of it. I still get patriotic
fervor when I hear “Back in the USA.”.
The
lyrics of this one are just too good to not post:
Oh well, oh well, I feel
so good today
We touched ground on an
international runway
Jet propelled back home,
from over the seas to the U.S.A.
New York, Los Angeles,
oh, how I yearned for you
Detroit, Chicago,
Chattanooga, Baton Rouge
Let alone just to be at
my home back in ol' St. Lou
Did I miss the
skyscrapers, did I miss the long freeway?
From the coast of
California to the shores of Delaware Bay
You can bet your life I
did, till I got back to the U.S.A.
Looking hard for a drive
in, searching for a corner cafe
Where hamburgers sizzle
on an open grill night and day
Yeah, and a jukebox
jumping with records like in the U.S.A.
Chuck Berry - Back In The
Usa Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Now
that was big for a black man in pre-civil rights America to say he was glad
about living in our country.
Skyscrapers, Delaware Bay, California coast, hamburgers, and juke
box. He captures the America of his day.
Another
thing that made Berry so popular was that he sang to the hearts of the young just
when the youth culture was rising in strength.
Whether this was coincidence or his insight I don’t know. So much of his music has a dance element to
it, a youthful dance step. One of my all-time
favorites is “Carol.”
“I
got my eyes on you baby, 'cause you dance so good/Oh Carol, don't let him steal
your heart away/I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day.” I remember wishing as a teen I had a girlfriend
named Carol just because of that song.
And
then there is this little gem. I picked
a clip with the lyrics because I wanted to showcase Berry’s skillful
storytelling. “Memphis, Tennessee” is
not exactly what it seems if you’re just casually listening. It’s about a broken home and trying to connect
with a daughter.
Both
R&B and County Western music have a history of song subjects on broken relationships. If “Memphis, Tennessee” is about a broken
family, “30 Days” is about attempting to reconstitute the family.
Here’s
a song that’s probably not as well know, but it’s one of my Berry favorites, “Down
the Road Apiece.”
The
lyrics are so good here, you just have to read along.
Now if you wanna hear
some boogie like I'm gonna play
It's just an old piano
and a knockout bass
The drummer man's a cat
they call Kickin' McCoy
You know, remember that
rubber-legged boy?
Mama's cookin' chicken
fried and bacon grease
Come on along boys it's
just down the road apiece
Well, there's a place you
really get your kicks
It's open every night
about twelve to six
Now if you wanna hear
some boogie you can get your fill
And shove and sting like
an old steam drill
Come on along you can
lose your lead
Down the road, down the
road, down the road apiece
There's a place you
really get your kicks
It's open every night
about twelve to six
Now if you wanna hear
some boogie you can get your fill
And shove and sting like
an old steam drill
Come on along you can
lose your lead
Down the road, down the
road, down the road apiece
Chuck Berry - Down The
Road A Piece Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Now
if you listen to the instrumentation, you can hear that beautiful, lyrical
piano accompanying Berry’s equally lyrical guitar riffs. That piano player is Johnnie Johnson, Berry’s long time pianist. I would venture to say that the Chuck Berry
sound and style would not have been what it was without Johnson. While Berry took songwriting credits, Johnson
ultimately disputed that it was solely Berry.
My guess is Johnson contributed immensely.
How
about live clip of “Nadine” to
show off Berry’s showmanship and classic duck step with the guitar. Keith Richards, who adored Berry, is playing rhythm in back
and that’s Bobby Keyson sax.
Chuck
played with that energy and work ethic up to 90 years of age.
Finally,
you can’t have a Chuck Berry retrospective without his classic, “Johnnie B.Goode.”
Louisiana
woods, New Orleans, country boy, log cabin, electric guitar, name in lights, this
is such an American song. The lyrics are
just classic.
Deep down Louisiana close
to New Orleans
Way back up in the woods
among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin
made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy
named Johnny B. Goode
Who never ever learned to
read or write so well
But he could play the
guitar just like a ringing a bell
Go go
Go Johnny go
He used to carry his
guitar in a gunny sack
Go sit beneath the tree
by the railroad track
Oh, the engineers would
see him sitting in the shade
Strumming with the rhythm
that the drivers made
People passing by they
would stop and say
Oh my that little country
boy could play
Go go
Go Johnny go
His mother told him
"Someday you will be a man,
And you will be the
leader of a big old band.
Many people coming from
miles around
To hear you play your
music when the sun go down
Maybe someday your name
will be in lights
Saying Johnny B. Goode
tonight."
Go go
Go Johnny go
Chuck Berry - Johnny B.
Goode Lyrics | MetroLyrics
Now
here’s the wonderful news to go along with the sad news of Berry’s
passing. Chuck had just finished
recording a new album, the first with original material in decades.
ST. LOUIS, MO – OCTOBER
18, 2016 — Chuck Berry, the artist who codified the
sound, rhythm and
language of rock and roll, celebrated his 90 th birthday today
with the surprise
announcement that he will release a new album – titled simply
‘CHUCK’ – in 2017 on
Dualtone Records (an Entertainment One Company).
Comprised primarily of
new, original songs written, recorded and produced by the
founding rock and roll
legend, ‘CHUCK’ is Berry’s first new album in thirty-eight
years. It was recorded in
various studios around St. Louis and features Berry’s
longtime hometown backing
group – including his children Charles Berry Jr.
(guitar) and Ingrid Berry
(harmonica), plus Jimmy Marsala (Berry’s bassist of
forty years), Robert Lohr
(piano), and Keith Robinson (drums) – which has
supported him for over
two decades on over two hundred residency shows at the
famed Blueberry Hill
club. More details about ‘CHUCK’ and other Berry-related
events will be revealed
in the coming weeks.
“This record is dedicated
to my beloved Toddy,” said Berry, referring to his wife
of 68 years, Themetta
Berry. “My darlin’ I’m growing old! I’ve worked on this
record for a long time.
Now I can hang up my shoes!”
Isn’t
that wonderful! I can’t wait until it’s
released.
Eternal
light shine on Mr. Berry. You gave us so
much pleasure.
I
thought this was a joke at first, but it’s true. The Swedish Academy that selects Nobel Prizes
has had some quirks over its life, but this takes the cake. If you haven’t heard, this year’s winner of
the Nobel Prize in Literature—yes, Literature—is none other than Bob
Dylan. From NBC News:
Bob Dylan was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
The 75-year-old music
legend was cited by the Swedish Academy for "having created new poetic
expressions within the great American song tradition." He will receive a
prize of $927,740.
Born Robert Allen
Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, Dylan became a prolific songwriter and penned some
of the most influential anti-war and civil rights anthems of the 1960s'
counterculture. They include "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times
They Are a-Changin" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
He has also had an
enormous impact on other artists of his generation and beyond, writing songs
that would later be covered by music legends ranging from Jimi Hendrix to
Adele.
I’m
not denying that Bob Dylan has had a large cultural impact, but is song writing
literature? When music and lyrics come
together to form a vocal piece, it’s the music that defines the work, not the
lyrics. The lyrics are a secondary
matter. Take opera for example. The author of an opera is the composer, not
the librettist. We know Le nozze di Figaro as a Mozart
opera. Opera buffs would know that the
librettist was Lorenzo Da Ponte, but even here that’s a special case. Da Ponte served as Mozart’s librettist for a
few of Mozart’s great operas, so he became famous in the opera world. But Mozart had other great operas without Da
Ponte and no one knows who the librettist were for those. How much did Da Ponte contribute in making those
operas with Mozart great? Well, no one
knows any of the operas Da Ponte wrote for other composers. No one knows the librettists for Giuseppe
Verdi’s great operas. Or Rossini’s. Or Pucini’s.
Or just about any other opera.
The
article goes on to say that Dylan’s songs are poetry:
Sara Danius, permanent
secretary of the Nobel Academy, told a news conference Thursday there was
"great unity" in the panel's decision.
"Bob Dylan writes
poetry for the ear," she added. "But it's perfectly fine to read his
works as poetry."
Now
I’m not saying that lyrics are not important to a song. It’s the lyrics that usually construct the
melody. Take for instance Dylan’s song,
“Rainy Day Women.” Here’s the first
verse and chorus from MetroLyrics:
:
Well, they'll stone you
when you're trying to be so good:
They'll stone you just
like they said they would
They'll stone you when
you're tryna go home
Then they'll stone you
when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so
all alone
Everybody must get stoned
The
verse part of the melody “They’ll sto-o-ne you when you’re try-y-ing to be so
goo-ood” is created by (1) the rough meter of the line, (2) the vowel length of
the words, and (3) a stretching of three words in the line, “stone,” a word
just before the final foot of the line (trying, said, tryna, there), and final
word of the line. Then the chorus part
of the melody still keeps that three stretched words, but the line is shorter
and now he shifts the first stretched word from the second word slot to the
first: “But” and “Ev.” Here’s the song
if you want to hear it.
The
point is the lyrics are important to the song but not in the way they are in
poetry. The words are selected not
according to verbal innovation but by commonplace. To be stoned for not following the rules is
actually cliché. The whole song is a cliché,
so that the interest in the song is in the articulation, not the language. Notice also that Dylan occasionally starts a
verse with “Well” or the chorus with “Tell you what” and “yes.” Those are what I call verbal ticks that
communicate attitude. They would be
meaningless in poetry. Notice too the
chuckles and tones in his voice as he articulates the song. Those are elements of songwriting and oral
communication, not literary poetry. The formulaic
repetition of each line simulates a chant.
Poetry would be boring with repetition like that, but because of the
articulation and melody, it holds musical interest. And I would put to you that the majority of
Bob Dylan’s songs contain more interest as a ditty and not as poetry.
Now
that doesn’t mean that there aren’t Dylan compositions where the lyrics could
stand alone as poetry. There are
some. Here’s one, “All Along the WatchTower.”
There must be some way
out of here
Said the joker to the
thief
There's too much
confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink
my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the
line know what any of it is worth
No reason to get excited,
the thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among
us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been
through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk
falsely now, the hour is getting late
All along the watchtower,
princes kept the view
While all the women came
and went, barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance a
wildcat did growl
Two riders were
approaching, the wind began to howl
It
still highly “songish,” mostly because the line forms a standard verse form,
but there’s a lot of interesting lines and imagery here to make it poetry. Here is a fascinating exegesis of the song:
Yes,
it still comes down to the song elements that enrich the song, but here I feel
confident to say that the poetic elements are of a high caliber here.
Those
two songs represent the extremes, a highly songish composition and a highly
poetic composition. How many songs are
closer to the poetic side? I find very
few. He has a body of work of great
songs, but they are songs, not poems.
Yes, he’s got some lines in songs that are poetic, but a line or two
does not make a poem. For him to receive
the Nobel Prize in Literature is a poor understanding of the distinction
between song and poetry. The Swedish
Academy really botched it.
So
what exactly separates music lyrics from poetry? I see at least three things. First, music lyrics rely heavily on formulaic,
repetitive structures. Poetry has
structure too, but nowhere near the level of structure of music. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that as
music has become recordable and mass produced that poetry in opposition has
become looser and less form dependent. Second,
music lyrics rely on common phrasing, if not clichéd phrases. Music requires the listener to identify with
the lyrics in order for the artistic experience to resonate. Commonplace language does that. Clichés are antithetical to poetry. Third, music relies on oral articulation and,
most important of all, the musical experience to carry meaning, There are jazz,
rock, and classical songs with just a handful of enigmatic words but where the music
makes the piece whole, gives it unity, completes the meaning. Those words alone are fragmented nothings,
but the music gives it coherence. Music
lyrics rely on the music to give it coherence, where poetry can’t rely on anything
but the words on the page. The more a
song relies on these three elements, the more “songish” I call it, and the less
poetic it is. For the most part, I find
Dylan’s work to be more songish than poetic.
That
is not to say that I dislike Dylan’s songs.
I love his songs. He’s got a
below average singing voice, he’s a mediocre guitar player, and a poor
harmonica player, but his songs are great!
How come? Because he’s a great
composer. Though not particularly
virtuosic, he’s a great song writer.
Might
as well give you another, one I really loved as a teen.
Take me on a trip upon
your magic swirlin' ship
My senses have been
stripped, my hands can't feel to grip
My toes too numb to step,
wait only for my boot heels
To be wanderin'
I'm ready to go anywhere,
I'm ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast
your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it.
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man,
play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there
is no place I'm going to
Hey ! Mr Tambourine Man,
play a song for me
In the jingle jangle
morning I'll come followin' you.
