Begin the Beguine

The other day in Texas, a strange thing happened to me…..(this could be the beginning of a million bad stories)

Ok,  Scratch that. Mulligan......

Sitting at a table in San Antonio, in a room full of people, and the music started.  I could see the music, no not like in a Dr. Sues book with pink and blue balloon notes, but real notes on a staff.  A few Quarter notes and a Eighth note, and in the Bass Clef the chord or two, but it was enough.  I was hearing music and reading it as well, it gave me goose bumps and a tingle in the base of my spine.  I could feel this music, and for the first time in 15 years was reading it; feeling it, like I was in the orchestra.  Then the guy at the podium began speaking , which of course makes sense since the music was on a PowerPoint presentation, but nonetheless wrecked any whisp of transcendental emotion available.  In retrospect it’s a bit odd to become transfixed by the theme to the Connecticut tourism commission, but again this was Texas so anything without a steal guitar was a blessing.

A week goes by, I’m languishing in a conference room in Iowa, listening to a presentation for the umpteenth time, watching a PowerPoint get tweaked literally hours before the presentation…..and again the music starts.  It had been a long day so when I heard Artie Shaw’s version of “Begin the Beguine” I had to stop myself from proclaiming “I love this song!” since it became obvious after the first few opening bars that no one else heard it.  But I heard it….ba da bump, Da  dot da dot daaaa dot, and then the clarinet picks off the melody and floats through the brass and guitar chords……perfection. You owe it to yourself to follow this link and hear this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps05TaQuYvc. Cole Porter wrote this tune, Artie Shaw made it famous, and it’s an amazing 108 measures long.  There is no bridge, no coda, no repetition, each phrase is unique, the song begins, moves and ends on its own, when it wants, and it sits!

I used to play his song in a semi pro jazz band, and when it was right, just right, you could feel the weight of the melody as it left the room. A few beats would go by and the band leader would yell “sit down!!!!” And we would play the song again, with an extra lazy swing, tight and heavy, “sittin on the swing” with nowhere to go, until the band was just shy of fashionably late.  This song defines a genre. It is swing.

If you had to choose a melody to define your life, could you? It’s been done and clichéd to death. 

(Especially in movies with soul searching interludes after the big conflict scene complete with close ups of the actors staring blankly out a window, and dejectedly eating dinner, here the director uses music to cut out one sided dialog and save money on rewrites)  

We all thought we had the song of our lives with  “Stair way to Heaven” at the 7^th grade dance, or “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” in a the freshmen dorm…..maybe Green Days, When September ends or Will Smiths Summertime….Anything Jimmy Buffet….I Got it, Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry!” whatever…..it’s your song you get to pick it.  However for anthem status you need to keep it, 30 years in, Slim Shady, or Wonderwall (what the hell is a Champaign Supernova anyway?) don’t cut it. The song needs legs and it has to be patient…..Begin the Beguine fits the bill for me.

The beauty here is the song doesn’t repeat.  The melody holds true, and is instantly recognizable but there is no hook…..no repeats.  You are not memorizing the chord progression and fudging your way through this song. Cole Porter and Artie themselves famously proclaimed it was impossible to know the whole song, they had to read it when they performed, which means each time, each bar was a surprise. The parallels to life are there, go find them yourself.

Fairly sure I can chalk up the music in Iowa to dehydration and a bad case of flat ass syndrome, and in Texas to the Connecticut Tourism representative, so insanity for the time being is out.  However I’m pleased that my life has a sound track and it’s a bit more profound the most of the music in my collection.  I like to think I know the whole song, but of course I don’t, none of us do.  We wont know the whole song until it ends, and there will be not repeats, no coda….we have got  to sit down and enjoy the melody while it swings and marvel at it, as it leaves the room, gone but not forgotten.