SAY WHAT?

YOU REALLY THINK IT’S NEW AND YOURS ALONE?

My friend and Queen of Blog (Saphyre Rose) and I were chatting this afternoon, and she put the idea in my head that I should write this. So, Rose, this one’s for the both of us!

RAP, HIP-HOP. The latest and greatest inventions of the “younger generation.” WRONG!!!!!! Game-show buzzer just went off. NO WAY!

First of all, it’s most definitely NOT new. More importantly, my young hip-hopping friends, it AIN’T yours.

Let’s go back several hundred years to early opera and oratorio (terms which you may look up in the dictionary – no free rides here). Between arias (songs, to the youth among us), the characters on stage carried on conversations to let the audience know what was happening. In the case of a long opera, it probably also clued in the cast member who had slipped back to the dressing room for a sip out of the flask! So, with just a few chords being played as background and maybe some rhythm, one or more characters are talking on pitch and in rhythm.

A typical scenario would be 2 women fighting over the same guy:

Look, he’s mine.
No, he’s mine.
What can we do?
He’s mine.
No, he’s MINE.
YO’ MOMMA! (loose translation from Italian)

Then the argument continues in song.

Let’s advance the clock now a few hundred years and check out JAZZ! Yup. J-A-Z-Z! Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, you know the sort. What do you think “scat-singing” really is? No real melody. Just a lot of cool syllables done rhythmically with a beat in the background.

Gee, how cool is that? So a number of 20th century classical composers decided to combine the two forms and come up with a German term “Sprechtstimmen,” literally “spoken singing.” It’s not true singing, but more speaking close to pitch and in rhythm, often to texts that actually rhyme.

Oh - and lest we forget the 50s and 60s! One of a number of very famous singers - JOHNNY CASH - did a wonderful song called "The Reverend Mister Black." He did not sing! He spoke in rhyme and rhythm: "He rode easy in the saddle. He was tall and mean...... Folks just called him The Reverend Mr. Black." Then there is the comedic country musician, Ray Stevens, who came out with a number of really funny songs that were not sung, but spoken in rhythm ("Mississippi Squirrel Revival," for one). How' bout that! Country music was rapping long before anyone else knew what it was!

Sigh….. just when a bunch of youngsters decided that they invented “their music,” I had to go and burst the bubble. Sorry, kids. It ain’t yours. And as a music teacher of mine used to say, “There ain’t nothin’ new under the sun.”

Now I’ve had my say,
Enough for today,
Mozart and Bach,
Those cats could rock.
No one holds a candle
To the composer named Handel.
Boom, chk, chk, chk, boom, boom……

Her name was Lucy.....

Her name was Lucy.

My Great Aunt Lucy was born in Virginia 1887, a mere 22 years after the Civil War. The youngest of 9 children, she was somehow different from the others. It’s almost as if she had ended up in the wrong litter – a poodle among boxers! She never married. Well into her 70s, she kept her hair died blonde and wore it long, curly, and wild. She wore too much makeup. She wore lots of rings (mostly big) and lots of bracelets. She always wore a large hat – and she wore a fur muff in the winter. She had piercing, sparkling eyes. I was completely fascinated with her when I was a child.

She was creative. To supplement her Social Security income, she started sewing doll costumes – everything from Southern Belles with ruffles to the Merry Widow in black velvet and fur. She lived in Washington, DC at the old Willard Hotel, at a time when it was mostly a rooming house when its former grandeur had faded, and it was inhabited by all kinds of people because it was affordable. Lucy didn’t mind not having a house of her own or husband or children. She was the Belle of the Willard and was never at a loss for company.

How I used to look forward to my visits with Aunt Lucy! Since my parents and I lived with my grandmother(her sister), my parents had no choice! We drove from Baltimore to Washington to visit her, or Aunt Lucy took the train from Washington to stay with us for a few days. Those visits were wonderful for me. Aunt Lucy used to bring me trinkets or a doll or something “girlie.” I loved her eccentric clothes and hair and how she always smelled of perfume.

Now, what brought all this on? I’ve been trying to find if there are any living relatives, especially on my mother’s side of the family, and I happened upon a little bit of info on Aunt Lucy in my Internet search. It said she was born, lived, and died – and gave her Social Security number.

When I went through my memories of Aunt Lucy, I realized that I inherited many of her traits without even knowing. I wear lots of jewelry everyday. I’m single. I march to my own drum.

Guess this apple fell from a tree two generations back.