Encomium of Musicals

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!