Fanfare for the Common Man

F is for Fanfare for the Common Man

There are some pieces of music that require no words, that move people (some people) almost to tears.  Music that makes a listener's heart seem to pause.

Aaron Copland was commissioned by the Cincinnati (Ohio, US) symphony orchestra as a sort of response to the entry of the United States into World War II.  The title 'Fanfare for Soldiers' was suggested, but Copland chose 'Fanfare for the Common Man'.  It premiered in March of 1943.

I first heard it in High School.  It was splendid, magnificent - and to imagine that such splendor and magnificence could pertain to we, the common people, was an eye-opening thought to one whose reading had been in history, and who had been dazzled by 'the captains and the kings'.

"You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down... some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today." - Aaron Copland

Revel in the music - it was written for you.  Click on the title to enjoy the fanfare performed by the United States Marine Band:

Fanfare for the Common Man (YouTube)

E is for Eres Tu

E is for Eres Tu

                                                     
Eres Tu ('You are') was sung by the Spanish group Mocedades, who performed it for the first time in 1973.   I did not hear it, myself until years later.  I first heard the melody for this on a Lawrence Welk show, of all places.  A beautiful singer from Mexico, often featured on the show, sang the words, a few of which I caught.  I loved the flow of the melody, the soaring climax, descending again, warmly, to a smile.

I took classes in Spanish when I was very young.  It is a Romance language, and I can understand it if I see it written, but the words of a song generally escape me.  ...something about the night... The rest of the words escaped me.  I made up my own to fit the melody, sang them when I felt like it, and stopped everything to listen when the song came on the air, as it still does from time to time.

And then along came the internet, and I adapted.  Last year it occurred to me that I could maybe look up the song, learn what, exactly, it was about, and stop singing phonetic gibberish.  As often happens when a smash hit song is translated into another language, the words didn't make a lot of sense.  It was obviously an issue with translation, not with the words themselves - the sense was lovely, a paean to all that a loved one was to the singer.

Last week, checking again, I found a very beautiful, flowing translation of the lyrics, which I share here with full credit to the translator:

So like a promise, it is you, it is you
So like a morning in the summer
The warmth of a smile, it is you, it is you
For me, for me, it is you

My hope and my yearning, it is you, it is you
So like a cool rain in my warm hands
So like a soft wind, it is you, it is you
For me, for me, it is you

The rhyme in my poem, it is you, it is you
Like a guitar sounds in the nighttime
The light on my horizon, it is you, it is you
For me, for me, it is you

I found a link on YouTube to one of the original performances.  It is HERE .  I like it even more.

I also found a link to a fairly recent performance of that song, which is something of a classic in Spain, deservedly.  Mocedades has worn well.

D is for Diamonds and Rust

I remember when this song first came out.  That beautiful, lyrical voice - framing words that made me blink and then smile:

Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall


The story behind the song was  an interesting one.  Someone she had had a relationship with - conjecture abounded.  Some said it was Bob Dylan.  Dylan, himself, seemed to think so, based on Baez' memoirs.  Does it matter?  A ghost from the past comes to visit, bringing memories:

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

And the emotions are there, with an openness to memories and, perhaps, another touch:

...It's all come back too clearly.
Yes, I loved you dearly.
And if you're offering me Diamonds and Rust
I've already paid.

- - - - - -
WATCH A VIDEO HERE  (Joan was not into music videos...this is a live recording)

© 1975 Chandos Music (ASCAP)

© 1975 Chandos Music (ASCAP)

C is for…

   There are three songs that seem to tie together.  Let’s look into them:

 Carry On My Wayward Son was featured in Kansas’ Leftoverture album.  It was also featured in the movie ‘Heroes’ with Henry Winkler and a very young Harrison Ford (and Sally Fields).  It has some themes that seem to mean something to me:
 

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don't know

On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about, I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say…

Hm.  We are all just a little frenetic in our younger years, but things seem to mellow when we come to ourselves and buckle down.  We even grin, a little:
Turning back the pages to the times I love best I wonder if she'll ever do the same
Now the thing that I call living is just being satisfied
With knowing I got no one left to blame

Carefree highway, I got to see you my old flame

Carefree highway, you seen better days
The morning after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you

 

But time passes,  dreams are within reach, you touch the past and reach for the future, and things are now, as they always were, possible:

Daddy's got a radio

He won it thirty years ago
He said 'Son I just know we're gonna hear you

singing on it someday!'

I Made it up to Music Row
Lordy don't the wheels turn slow
But I wouldn't Trade a minute
I wouldn't have it any other way 
Just show me to the Stage


I'm chasin' the neon rainbow, Livin' that honky-tonk dream
'Cause all I've ever wanted Is to pick this guitar and sing
Just trying to be somebody Just wanna be heard and seen
Chasin' that neon rainbow Livin' that honky-tonk dream

- - - - - -
Carry On My Wayward Son:
Songwriter(s): Kerry Livgren
Copyright: Kirshner Don Music

Carefree Highway, ©1973 by Gordon Lightfoot

Chasin' That Neon Rainbow lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

 

The Begonia Bribe... for the B Day!

The Begonia Bribe:  2^nd in the Garden Society Cozy Mystery series by Alyse Carlson (aka: Hart Johnson) 

 

Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment …

A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all.

But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb.

 

 

 

Pre-order on: Amazon Barnes and Noble Find Hart/Alyse at: Confessions of a Watery Tart Facebook Author Page or Profile Twitter

B - Back in the High Life Again

This song by Steve Winwood somehow speaks to dreams I once had and renounced because of initial disappointments and the pure hard work involved in them.  Like the others I speak of in this challenge, it's one of those songs that make me stop what I'm doing and listen. 

I tend to be a visual sort, and as a storyteller I find that songs turn themselves into stories.    I can see someone who turned away and rejected  everything confident that he could do it all by himself and not 'pay his dues', coming to himself thinking that he could do it, and this time he would do it right, step back into the world he belonged in.  It might take courage...

But when you're born to run
It's so hard to just slow down
So don't be surprised to see me
Back in that bright part of town

But will he be welcomed back?  does he have a chance? Is it worth the risk to try again? To straighten his shoulders, take a deep breath and move forward?  Does he dare?  Would I dare?  You have to try -

You used to be the best
To make life be life to me
And I hope that you're still out there
And you're like you used to be

Is it worth the risk? IS it? IS IT?  You take a deep breath, open the door, look at the faces turned toward you, step forward, hopes high -

We'll be back in the high life again
All the eyes that watched us once
Will smile and take us in

It is.

LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE

 Songwriter(s): Steve Winwood, Will Jennings
Copyright: F.s. Music Ltd., Blue Sky Rider Songs

A - for...

AFRICA - by Toto

You hear the thudding of soft drums, an almost tinkling counterpoint, and then the words come softly:

I hear the drums echoing tonight…

But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversations…

The beat continues and the words unwind their images -

…Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti -

..and the drums continue.  Africa…

I think, somehow, we all have an affinity for The Skull-Shaped Continent.  Did life come from there?  I don't know, but we all have roots in its soil, we all have images in our minds of bright clothing, of mountains or plains, deserts - all the fabulous wealth of human civilization, some of them existing in our knowledge only as memories.  Africa. 

And every time I hear Toto's song I stop and hear the drums…

Africa lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC