Death to selfies

If you look at my banner photo on my Facebook page (that is, if you even go there anymore – isn’t FB for old and/or dead people?) you will see that it looks like a selfie. There’s my big old face dead center, scenic mountain backdrop, artful sunflare, and all.

Except I wasn’t trying to take my picture. I am technologically inept and was trying to take a picture of what was in front of me, in the other direction – a beautiful mountain panorama. Therefore, what you see is the most unpremeditated view of my face you are likely to get in this life.

Taking photographs was painful in the flashbulb and film days. We were always steered to “look into the light,” which resulted in many pictures of me cringing and clutching my face, albeit in good, solid lighting. I still have flash-flinch, and few photographers have captured me with my eyes open.

Now I bob amid selfie takers. The medium is the message. Everyone’s a star, and anything is permitted.

With the democratization of the media, everyone is now their own broadcaster and network. The gatekeepers have fallen. News and information can no longer be monetized, and in a capitalist society that means the communication apparatus is now for rent, with no public responsibilities (not that this hasn’t been always true to some extent). Initially liberating due to the ability of alternate voices to make themselves heard for the first time, the dissolution of the news industry means that there is no impetus to find out and tell the truth, to the best of one’s ability. And if truth is gone, all that remains is assertion.

Anti-intellectualism is on the rise. An overarching sense of being on the same page as a nation, no matter how awkwardly produced, is gone. Ironically, that consensual reality was a product of diversity. That mixture of opinion, fact, advertisements, propangadna, and as many viewpoints as could be crammed into a print publication at once forced the reader to be exposed to unfamiliar ideas, to be aware of other people’s problems, of trouble on the horizon. We self-select now. People do not want to know what’s going on (unless, seemingly, it’s upbeat stories about contemporary living for a savvy readership). We have ensiled ourselves.

We are almost post-literate. We quite literally express oursevles in images and video clips. We pose, we identify where we are, we say how we feel. We contextualize ourselves for our friends and followers, always foregrounded against a referent. We expel concussions of self-regard. We like things, we share things, we argue online, but it’s all little bush fires out on the grand savannah. That atomization of the media has fragmented the popular will, stunted its attention span. We are all chasing page views now, and anything goes, and goes by quickly.

We are exchanging the lasting for the ephemeral. The advent of “disposable” media services such as Snapchat means that the content vanishes after a time. With that the idea of generating something permanent is lost, and under that I find a fundamental, intolerable despair. It makes me fear that there are more people who think that there’s no reason to aim for something that lasts than there are otherwise. (Since I’ve taken it on myself to tell stories for a living, it’s of course in my own interest that I promote this concept. Have you Googled me lately? Online, in archives, my stuff’s still out there, and that’s the point.).

Instead of broadcasting to an unrestricted audience, the nature of social media is constricting us into a multitude of discrete sets of relationships – as numerous as cells in a beehive, each with a restricted, mediated point of view. With no new paradigm of consensual reality emerging, everyone is more easily entranced by their own illusions. Instead of the digital revolution pulling us all out together into the light, it has merely helped us build better bunkers.

So what’s the answer? Take otheries, I think. The obvious metaphor from my tale of my photograph, that I obtain the most accurate self-portrait when I focus outside myself, is trite, obvious, and ridiculously sentimental, even for me. But it is true.

When we turn the camera around, when we really look around us and transmit that, we’re on the right track back being human. All the old media can dry up and blow away, and the new ones can assume their rude shapes. The value in telling stories persist. We still need them. And when we tell them, we do wind up asserting ourselves in the most powerful fashion.

The NRR Project #26: ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’

From left: King, Myers, Ryder, Work of the Fisk Jubilee Quartet

‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’

Fisk Jubilee Quartet

Recorded December 1, 1909

3:26

The intersection of black and white music in American culture continues here. In this case, instead of white culture misappropriating and distorting black identity via the minstrel show and the “darkie” stereotypes, this is a genuine impulse from black culture phrased in a way that penetrated and permeated white identity forever.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers first concertized in 1871, to raise funds for their namesake university in Nashville, Tennessee. This early history is best studied via Andrew Ward’s excellent Dark Midnight When I Rise, discussed by me here in an earlier essay. Their combination of beautiful, deeply felt original material and precise, part-sung, a capella Western-art-music style was intoxicating. (To get a sense of how powerful this kind of singing is, listen to Fisk’s 2003 album In Bright Mansions.)

The Singers’ original ensemble disbanded in 1878, but the tradition continued through the auspices of the institution. This quartet is a breakout from the larger group, consisting of John Wesley Work II, James Andrew Myers, Alfred Garfield King, and Noah Ryder. It’s typical of the Fisk style – deliberate, precise, voluptuously voiced but blended dynamically, and filled with rectitude. It does anything but swing.

And perhaps the starch had to be taken out of it to make it palatable to Caucasian tastes, “churchy” enough. They introduced not only this song but also “Steal Away,” “Balm in Gilead,” “Wade in the Water,” “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” and many more inextricably woven into our collective cultural DNA, black and white, Christian and non-, alike. As soon as the Fisk repertoire was out there, it spread madly – everyone sang these songs. They are vehicles of transportation, compelling in themselves as embodiments of faith forged into musical phrases.

Recordings like these pave the wave for the explosion of gospel music, one of the few things black and white culture could share without discomfort for decades. That would give birth in turn to many more American musics.

  

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: cylinder recordings of Ishi, ‘last of his tribe.’

The NRR Project #25: 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'

‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’

Edward Meeker

Recorded September, 1908

2:11

Why is this song so popular? It’s a straight-up novelty waltz, Tin Pan Alley-style, in the trend of songs of the period such as “Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine” and “Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven.” Neither of its composers, Jack Norworth and Albert von Tilzer, had ever seen a baseball game, or would until decades later. It wasn’t even played in a ballpark until 1934; it really wasn’t sung consistently during the seventh-inning stretch of major-league baseball games until Harry Caray popularized it during his time broadcasting for the Chicago White Sox during the 1976 season.

Here it’s essayed by the redoubtable Edward Meeker, a long-time Edison employee. We are still nearly 20 years away from the advances of electrical recording techniques, but the analog systems are getting better -- the sound here is less muddy, and the background instruments are balanced and differentiated.

The lyrics don’t contain a ton of inside data – the writers know that three strikes make an out, and that you’re expected to argue with the umpire. That’s about it. But, being good craftsmen, Norworth and von Tilzer came up with a nifty ditty – singable, easy to remember, jaunty, upbeat. The best songs seem to grab and hold an indefinable essence of their subject, and in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” there is something genial and sunny and optimistic, like a baseball game on a summer afternoon. To date, it’s the only non-religious or –patriotic song to be ritually sung by the general American public.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’

The NRR Project #24: 'No News; or, What Killed the Dog?'

Nat Wills, in tramp costume.

‘No News; or, What Killed the Dog’

Nat Wills

Recorded October 14, 1908

2:53

Nat Wills was the prototype of the modern standup comic. He used personas, most notably his tramp character, the visual of which became the template for the stereotype until Chaplin came along. He told funny stories and sang parodies of songs of the day. On Broadway, he appeared in sketches in variety shows such as the Ziegfeld Follies.

He was a natural for the recording studio. His strong delivery and diction, developed in theaters across the country, came through loud and clear. This routine, his most familiar, is a bit that’s been traced back at least to 1817. In it, a master returns home and asks his servant for the news. “No news,” replies the servant, “except the dog died.” “How did he die?” asks the master, and thus unravels a long, escalating list of disasters that have engulfed the home while the master was gone.

The idea of the add-on story is as old as nursery rhymes such as “The House That Jack Built,” “The Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly,” and others. The repetition, combined with the surprise of each added piece of the story, is an essential lesson about the power of narrative. This routine is hilarious the first time, mildly amusing the second, and annoying from thenceforth. Let us move on.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’

The NRR Project #22: Caruso sings ‘Vesti la giubba’

‘Vesti la giubba’ aria from Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci”

Enrico Caruso

Recorded March 17, 1907

3:36

  

‘Caruso’ is a bit of an eponym, and that requires effort, good or bad. To call someone a Caruso, or an Einstein, or a Brando, ironically or not, is to refer to someone as an exemplar of a quality. Enrico Caruso, for better or worse, is the Western-art-culture epitome of the fancy “singer” – a human songbird, warm-hearted, outgoing, flamboyant, and dynamic; Italian, therefore somewhat exotic to many, loving fine dress and good food and beautiful women, belting into the analog recording horn more than 260 times between 1902 and 1920, selling millions of records.

Why? Was he that extraordinary? I can’t say that I am an expert. I first knew Caruso through the persona of his mid-century equivalent, Mario Lanza, in the 1951 film “The Great Caruso.”

Now, a half-century of learning about, listening to, and seeing opera, I can say the fame is justified. There are many hurdles to be gotten over to hear this great piece of recorded performance, however. “Vesti la giubba” is instantly recognizable, the go-to image and sound of opera, quoted, adapted, monetized, parodied.

You hear it, your eyes cross, the stereotype leaps into your brain, and you’re done – turned off if you hate opera, numb if you’re a fan because you’ve heard it A THOUSAND TIMES. It’ a sad clown, he’s laughing, he’s crying. It’s Smokey Robinson’s inspiration.

Here’s the story: it comes from Ruggero Levoncavallo’s 1892 Pagliacci, written in the wake of the creation of the nitty-gritty, proto-Neorealist verismo genre, all about peasants getting stabbed, and such – triggered by the success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana two years before.

In this case, the stabber is Canio, a professional clown (don’t have him work your kids’ birthday parties!) whose wife Nedda is a little loose. This drives Canio nuts, and at the end of Act 1, he sings these words:

  

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio, non so più quel che dico, e quel che faccio! Eppur è d'uopo, sforzati! Bah! Sei tu forse un uom? Tu se' Pagliaccio! Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina. La gente paga, e rider vuole qua. E se Arlecchin t'invola Colombina, ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudirà! Tramuta in lazzi lo spasmo ed il pianto in una smorfia il singhiozzo e 'l dolor, Ah! Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto! Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor!

Act! While in delirium, I no longer know what I say, or what I do! And yet it's necessary... make an effort! Bah! Are you not a man? You are a clown! Put on your costume, powder your face. The people pay to be here, and they want to laugh. And if Harlequin shall steal your Columbina, laugh, clown, so the crowd will cheer! Turn your distress and tears into jest, your pain and sobbing into a funny face – Ah! Laugh, clown, at your broken love! Laugh at the grief that poisons your heart!

It’s a powerful, effective aria in a fast-paced, muscular, expressive opera, Levoncavallo’s only hit but one of the most frequently performed operas in the world to this day. (Spoiler alert: everybody has a really bad show that evening, in Act 2. Like, worst show ever.) Like other signature tenor arias such as “Una furtiva lagrima” or “E lucevan e stele,” it’s lament, a tear-jerking self-pity party. And who doesn’t love that?

The piece is strong, but its ubiquity is due entirely to Caruso’s vocal prowess. (Louis Armstrong would listen to Caruso records, and they influenced his approach as a soloist.) He came along at precisely the right time for the recording industry. He seemed made for the recording studio. The process read his voice well – listen to a few opera recordings from the same period. They are stiff and stilted. Caruso transmits excitement.

 The first of Caruso’s three recordings of the aria in 1902, made only with piano accompaniment, made him a star. Yet he pushes hard in that release. He’s working at full volume, almost bellowing, certainly losing breath too soon during the final phrase. In 1904, he is much more relaxed and expressive, but still wobbly towards the end. By the time we get to this recording in 1907, the one selected for the Registry, Victor Records has sprung for orchestral accompaniment, the space Caruso in singing in is more resonant, and Caruso is more proficient and expressive than before.

It’s not just Caruso’s power – everyone had to project into large, echoing houses before the age of microphones. There is a kind of macho, competitive aspect to opera; Caruso ends up in many minds as the arts equivalent of Babe Ruth. It’s not his charisma, though he certainly had it. He is gifted with natural ability, but it’s the hard, highly skilled work he does with it that makes him memorable.

His voice is clear, ringing, with a quality of transparency as though he were singing THROUGH the note rather than on it. His diction is superb (at least in Italian; he essayed that and a couple of French roles; he sang Lohengrin in Italian, which must have been something.) He's smooth, turning lines into thoughts. Above all, his phrasing is rarely surpassed, because of his ability to make a deep emotional connection with his roles. Like Domingo, Chaliapin, and Callas, he can act as well as sing.

All these factors combine to make his singing still evokes a sense of immediacy, a “thereness” that is palpable. There’s a lot of thought going on in his performances; by serving the music, he elevates his work. And it stays fresh, through all the layers of association, that vitality comes through. And that, my friends, is the name of the game.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: ‘No News, or What Killed the Dog?’

The NRR Project #23: Frances Densmore Chippewa/Ojibwe Cylinder Collection

Densmore recording material with Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot tribe, 1916.

Chippewa/Ojibwe Cylinder Collection

Curated by Frances Densmore

Singer: Billy Murray

Recorded September 1907 – November 1910

357 cylinders (15 hours, 4 min.)

Here’s another example of sound recordings that are not available to the public; like their predecessors, the Passamaquoddy tribal field recordings of 1890, this is due to the tribal control of the material’s use.

Frances Densmore was a pioneering ethnomusicologist from Minnesota who began her career with these recordings. She was sympathetic and rigorous, fighting to preserve Native American traditions at a time when the American government was hard at work extinguishing them, and popular culture was content with the stereotype of the marauding Redskin. More than 50 years of her efforts resulted in a trove of material for tribal members, and researchers.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: Caruso’s ‘Vesti la giubba.’

The NRR Project #21: ‘You’re A Grand Old Rag (Flag)’

A quick change of sheet music, in response to public demand.

“You’re a Grand Old Rag (Flag)”

Music and Lyrics: George M. Cohan

Singer: Billy Murray

Recorded Feb. 6, 1906

2:46

Brash is seemingly a word coined for George M. Cohan. The performer/playwright/songwriter/director/producer, who started his stage career at age 8, was one of the most popular and powerful figures in Broadway history. From 1904 through 1920, he staged more than 50 productions there – all but one successful. His songs such as “Yankee Doodle Dandy" and “Give My Regards to Broadway” are, justly, classics. Onstage, he epitomized a kind of cocky, hard-charging, quick-witted American persona that audiences responded to with devotion for decades.

“Americanism” was in the air. The country was finally waking up from self-absorption and internal development and was beginning to make its first expansionist stretches, jumping into jingoism with a will. Its industrial might was wowing the world. There was need for a vernacular expression of this energy and pride, akin to the already-popular marches of Sousa.

As a multiple talent, Cohan resembles impresario predecessors such as Dion Boucicault and David Belasco, as well as his contemporary Florenz Ziegfeld. Most of his plays are comic vehicles touched with sentiment, their plots driven by the confusions of romantic entanglements – early, important gropings toward the book musical.

“The Grand Old Rag,” as it was listed in the original program, was a generally despised title. No one wanted to hear the Stars and Stripes referred to in that way. The lyrics changed from “You’re a grand old rag/You’re a high-flying flag” to “You’re a grand old flag/Though you’re torn to a rag” to, finally, the redundant but unobjectionable “You’re a grand old flag/You’re a high-flying flag.” 

Unfortunately, the song had already been recorded. Popular tenor Billy Murray, the “Denver Nightingale” (he lived in the Mile High City from age 5 to 16) was another peppy, confident belter who could sell an upbeat song. It’s instructive to see that the song was recorded six days before the musical opened – marketing savvy is not as recent a development as we might think. (Murray wound up recording all three lyric variants.)

The words and music are patriotic hodgepodges, interpolating “Dixie,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Marching through Georgia,” and Cohan’s own “Yankee Doodle Dandy” hit of two years previous. The result is a sensory overload of associations, delivered in an up-tempo rush that sweeps the listener along. We will run into Cohan again in a future installment, when we examine his classic of evangelical interventionism, 1917's "Over There."

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Up next: the Frances Densmore Chippewa/Ojibwe Cylinder Collection.