Prooemion
Where would the 50s and 60s be without movie
musicals? Dead! What would happen to social-life if there
were not the background music and dancing?
Dead! Mute and mime and speed and
time should be revered with reverence if preferred and receive the railings if
ridiculous. Without music, there would
be no dancing, and without dancing there would be no musicals, without
musicals, there would be no life. A
musical is the breath of life – the loss of breath by the dance, and the life
of the lyrics. Hence, life would be
meaningless without musicals. Can you
imagine not seeing a man walk down the street without getting his “groove on”
or a woman having just been asked out by the man of her dreams simply telling
the story without singing it to the local woodland creatures? For my part, by introducing some reasoning
into my speech, I wish to prove the popularity and, having exonerated the Etude
from its exile, release the reason from the reprise. Mindless moments of meaningless meandering
might be miserable if it were not for the magical musings of a miraculous
musical. What more can be said? Nothing, the silence has been magnified by
the sound…the sound of music.
Narration
After the caveman beating his chest,
came the court jester’s timbrel. After
the court jester, came the plunking harpsichord. After the harpsichord, came the Salvation
Army band. After the band, came the
silence…the silence of the Silent movie.
These silent megaphones blasted the world with the love and the war, but
not the sound. Musicals got their start
after the Silents graciously stepped aside in order for such a splendid and
flawless piece of art; no fault. They
just realized that the world could not live without the song AND dance. The sun will come out tomorrow, but the moon
will set on the sound of music if it had not been for the advancement of the
age. Soon after, many other countries
decided to pride themselves on their culture and produce their own kind of
musicals. Having the lush color of a
Bollywood just enhances the joy that is felt when seeing life played out with
such pleasure and leisure. Simply
singing was hyper-drived into third gear by adding dancing WHILE singing, what
a pleasure. What a splendid feat of the
imagination! No longer were social clubs
to be the only source of lovely singing voices of those who stood in
extravagant gowns and audacious head-pieces of audacious creation. The whole world saw and accepted. The musicals were the signature on the
contract to sell the world’s soul to the Fates. Throughout the fifties and sixties, audiences
were enthralled by the sheer-genius of the “sung-en word”…normal life became
intercepted. This genre of performance has lasted from the
early 1900s until the present-day when many of the “classics” are being remade
and rebooted.
Proposition
For either by the intercession of the
gods or by the survival of the fittest, mankind has learned to admit how lost
they are without musicals. One can live
without internet and news, no need for games or sports, not a single story can
be told without music. Musicals are the mastermind of the music, the genius of
the glee, the fabulousness of the fame, and the dreams of the dance.
Proof
You can live without internet and
news. Such menial things cannot possibly
begin to influence the way your life is lived.
They are just mediums for a false mask to be placed upon your
personality or the happenings of the world around us. The news is only filled with tragedy and
sorrow anyway, so why not delve into the lush beauty and supreme majesty that
is found within the bars of a musical soliloquy. You can endure the coldness of a
mother-in-laws kiss, but can you survive the solitude of the silence?
Now if through the first, you have not
been convinced, now comes the predetermination to meditate on the real response
of entertainment. No need for games or
sports. The beat is boring without the excitement of the next verse. The physical exercise and teamwork that is
supposed on the soccer field or professed on the tennis court cannot be
compared to the heart-pumping, knee-slapping, head-bouncing physical exertion
in a musical. It is a proven fact that
dancers and singers are as agile and fit as an athlete. Just look at the abs of an alto or the
buffness of a baritone. A ballerina can
stand heads and TOES above the crowd of a football team and a tapper can draw
more attention than the squeak of sneakers on the basketball key.
But if it is impossible to live without
the joy, it is clear that not a single story can be told without music. Look at the variety, or lack of, in the
everyday movies – guy likes girl, chases girl, convinces girl, sleeps with
girl, leaves girl, the end…OR guy hates guy, challenges guy, fights guy, chases
guy, kills guy, gets girl, the end; literally, THE END. The same story segments are rundown and
played out so much that each and every movie can reveal the boring lifestyle of
a screen-writer as it is played out in his work. Now take a musical; the stories vary as often
as the harmonies. Many a story has been
called, but few have been chosen to receive the honor of the music. Who could have predicted the end of Doris
Day’s Calamity Jane, the twist in Bye Bye Birdie, the relationship-revelations
of Mamma Mia, the love-triangle of Wicked, or the hidden menace of Kismet. The stories are real, the rulings are final…this
is Judge Judy (Garland).
I both deem and define all music as the
meter of the mind. Love and hate, virtue
and vice, joy and pain, all fade and dissolve into the wholeness of the
harmony. Cadence can be condensed,
Baroque can be borrowed, dynamics can be denied, and the falsetto can be finished,
but the interval is never interrupted.
The key signature is always turned in the lock of the heart.
Epilogue
How then can it be otherwise answered
that life cannot be lived without a Libretto or a Ligature? Now, your mind has
been melted, your heart has hyper-extended, and your feet have flittered down
the street. Your stomach has done as
many somersaults as the dashing leading man, your palms are permanently indented
with the crescent moons of your nails just like the ones mirrored in the star-struck
eyes of the beautiful girl in love. I
have by means of speech removed any shadow of a doubt that the lyrics and the
dance bring existence its romance. You
and your parents have found common ground on taste as you choose to move to the
dark side of their childhood, permanently.
Your life has new meaning as the songs trickle through your memory all
day. You find a new beat in your
step. You have been transported to the
world of musicals and converted to the power of the dance. I have observed the insensitivity of the
individual towards the show-tunes and have tried to end the enduring enmity; I
wished to whisk the wasteful into a wonderful wildness of the well-in-tuned. Welcome to the real world!
