My photograph archive is and remains an experience to me. Eventhough the years have passed since I left Korea, when I see the pics I can smell it, I can hear it, I can feel the cold on my hands on that day when there had been a heavy snow fall in that small town. I ran around madly clicking, clicking … a South African friend of mine said to me that we who have been born under an African sun, for us snow is magic … I share some of my magic.
Snow on the branches … on the branchesThis is Ji Sung Sin, the fabled Warrior-Admiral who invented the battle ship in the 1590s, saving Korea from yet another attack from Japan’s immense navy. Here, under snow.The lion in Korea … I would’ve thought that a tiger would be their iconic animal, but no, it is a lion. Here, under snow
Under that snow …
In the garden of the Catholic churchBlue and white A tree made magical More magic
You don’t play St James Infirmary Blues on the piano. At least, I don’t. You thrust the chords, you hammer them down, you fall into those notes. You drown in it. How else? The song has been carrying its suffering, probably with tragic blues irony, since the 18th-century, evolving different lyrics with each generation. In 1928 a young Louis Armstrong records his dirge-like version. He is not alone. Before him, after him, the versions of this song proliferate so that in the 1960s, the French singer Joe Dassin records his cover. In recent times, Katie Smith (see You Tube) records her towering version of this song.
The lyrics of the contemporary versions deal with the death of a young woman and the “blues” reaction of one who loved her. The singer speaks of his own death in the lyric. For me, this song is a pain dance – when the crushing grief, when the agony of losing someone becomes too great to sit still, you move, you dance, you sing, to surmount the unbearable.
Get six gamblers to carry my coffin
Six chorus girls to sing my song
Put a jazz band on my tailgate
To raise Hell as we go along.
Ralph Ellison has described the blues as an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of raw experience living in our consciousness, to feel it, to surmount it. St James Infirmary Blues is the music that does this the most for me.
This poem by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was probably written in the 1820s. The poet’s life was one of great difficulty. He had Jewish ancestry and was related to Karl Marx, perhaps the most despised philosopher in the conservative world of Prussia. The poem Der Doppelgänger has had great influence, not least amongst the English Romantic poets. The concept of a wraith, the shadowy likeness of person appearing before or after death, has taken many forms in a multitude of stories.
I offer a translation of the poem, with some thoughts.
The night is quiet, the streets are calm, In this house my beloved once lived: She has long since left the town, But the house still stands, here in the same place.
A man stands there also and looks to the sky, And wrings his hands, overwhelmed by pain: I am terrified – when I see his face, The moon shows me my own form!
O, you Doppelgänger! you pale comrade! Why do you ape the pain of my love Which tormented me upon this spot So many a night, so long ago?
It is a poem of appearance and reality – the quiet streets contrasting with the torment of the final lines. There is also the contrast of that which has changed and that which has not. In the second stanza the writer is confronted with his own likeness. It is a terrifying experience, terrifying too, because of its now-distant origins, as said in the final line. This shows that time does not have the ability to heal and it is a shock to discover that. That it is a man, a presence outside of him, suggests how he has suppressed dealing with the grief of loss. The horror now is in the recognition of this reality. The choice of the word ape is interesting. I have even seen the word monkey in a translation. There is a kind of cruel joke in this mimicking, even though the outward image – the wringing of hands – is unfunny.
Schubert’s music of the poem, it feels to me, draws on a history before the appearance of the poem. It is a monumentally dark piece, in total contrast to almost all contemporary music.
This 1963-4 song from the musical world of Brazilian Bossa Nova has a remarkable history. With the Beatles’ Yesterday, it has literally thousands of covers, the two most commercially successful songs in musical history. In 1965 it won the Grammy.
It has always been interesting for me to speculate why two such differing songs should be so loved by the public. Yesterday has a kind of hymnal touch. The lyric, McCartney has said, became associated with his mother’s death when he was 14.
The Girl from Ipanema has (for my limited musical knowledge) intricate chord work making liberal use of sevenths and nineths, which creates a warm sensuality. The lyric is bitter-sweet, an emotion difficult to achieve in writing. The vast majority of songs, lyrically speaking, are about love or the loss of it. Ipanema stands away from that, suspending you between extreme attraction and pain.
The song and its lyric are inspired by a real person, seventeen at the time when the composer Antonio Carlos Jobim first saw her. She is now a celebrity in Brazil. The critic Moraes has written about the inspiration for the song: … the paradigm of the young Carioca: a golden teenage girl; a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling that youth fades, of beauty that is not ours alone – it is a gift in its beautiful and melancholic ebb and flow.
“Tall and tanned and young and lovely” – few words have such immediate appeal for me. They have the feel of the Portuguese word for girl, in English, a rather inexpressive sounding word – in Portuguese the Latin sensuality is there … Garota. (Is there some association with the word erotic?) And looking at how the chords infuse the lyrics – “But each day {Amin 7 – a soft beautiful chord} when she walks to sea {D7b9 – a dissonant jazz chord}, she looks {Gmin7 – a soft beautiful chord} straight ahead, not at me {C7b9 – a dissonant jazz chord}. It is a song that adds to the reputation that the Brazilians were musically the most sophisticated song-writers of their time.
But The Girl from Ipanema is not the only song of this quality. Jobim poured them out, songs of indescribable beauty … Meditation, Agua de Beber, Wave, Once I loved, Desafinado Favela, Insensatez, Corcavado … the list goes on. It is probably the tradition of Portuguese fado music that provided a creative context for him. What a gift he has given us!
Will Will Travel 