![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI have long noticed that the happiest people I have ever come across are those old men who have worked at something good and succeeded. And recently I have come across two Youtube performances that seem to me to embody that very spirit. The artists are different in almost every way - one an obscure backwoods preacher-musician, the other a national legend; one intensely religious, the other joyously worldly; one American, the other Italian. But they have in common a sense of unloosened happiness and confidence, a love of music as life itself, and a bright and joyful clarity, that I believe and hope can make us all feel a bit better about our lives, never mind how rough we have it. After all, these two grandfathers have seen it all - and this is what they have drawn from it. Listen, then, first, to American piano man Billy Pollard's skyrocketing account of the "Battle Hymn of the Republit" (his rendition, not mine):
And while you listen, let me tell you about Renato Carosone. Carosone came from generations of Neapolitan popular musicians and had song and rhythm in his blood. From 1948 to 1960, he dominated the Italian charts with a series of songs that brilliantly combined Neapolitan sound and jazz influences. In 1960, having smelled the coming rock and roll revolution, he retired at the height of his fame, wisely avoiding the fate of contemporaries such as Claudio Villa, who came in their own lifetimes to seem impossibly outdated and positively reactionary. And then, in the eighties, an extraordinary rebirth of his old successes began; and the old gentleman, still superbly fit and in control, started turning up in TV and at public concerts, as people realized that his songs were genuine classics that would endure.
His 75th was celebrated in style with a concert at Naples' Mercadante Theatre, the city's second finest after the legendary San Carlo. This was unlike the typical tribute concert, in that it amounted to a couple of hours of Carosone singing and playing - at 75, mind you; and look and tell me whether he looks it - duetting with a few "friends", including another legend, Lionel Hampton. What you will see is the finale of the concert, featuring Carosone's possibly greatest song, "Tu vuo' fa' l'americano" ("You're so keen on playing the Yank" - by way of gossip, the grey-haired singer who takes up the song for a while, Renzo Arbore, is said to be the very person about whom Carosone wrote the song when he was a boy).
The start, especially, is memorable: who could possibly have conceived something more affecting and delightful at the same time than the cheeky, charming little ten-year-old Colomba Pane, bracketed by those two mountains of music and experience, Carosone and Hampton - a hundred and fifty years of music and greatness between them - belting out Carosone's song with brilliance beyond her years, the very image of the torch being handed on; and then Carosone and his friends just go on and on, because music is joy and music is life, because it goes on as long as the heart beats and the lungs breathe - because we were born for this.
And while you listen, let me tell you about Renato Carosone. Carosone came from generations of Neapolitan popular musicians and had song and rhythm in his blood. From 1948 to 1960, he dominated the Italian charts with a series of songs that brilliantly combined Neapolitan sound and jazz influences. In 1960, having smelled the coming rock and roll revolution, he retired at the height of his fame, wisely avoiding the fate of contemporaries such as Claudio Villa, who came in their own lifetimes to seem impossibly outdated and positively reactionary. And then, in the eighties, an extraordinary rebirth of his old successes began; and the old gentleman, still superbly fit and in control, started turning up in TV and at public concerts, as people realized that his songs were genuine classics that would endure.
His 75th was celebrated in style with a concert at Naples' Mercadante Theatre, the city's second finest after the legendary San Carlo. This was unlike the typical tribute concert, in that it amounted to a couple of hours of Carosone singing and playing - at 75, mind you; and look and tell me whether he looks it - duetting with a few "friends", including another legend, Lionel Hampton. What you will see is the finale of the concert, featuring Carosone's possibly greatest song, "Tu vuo' fa' l'americano" ("You're so keen on playing the Yank" - by way of gossip, the grey-haired singer who takes up the song for a while, Renzo Arbore, is said to be the very person about whom Carosone wrote the song when he was a boy).
The start, especially, is memorable: who could possibly have conceived something more affecting and delightful at the same time than the cheeky, charming little ten-year-old Colomba Pane, bracketed by those two mountains of music and experience, Carosone and Hampton - a hundred and fifty years of music and greatness between them - belting out Carosone's song with brilliance beyond her years, the very image of the torch being handed on; and then Carosone and his friends just go on and on, because music is joy and music is life, because it goes on as long as the heart beats and the lungs breathe - because we were born for this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 08:47 pm (UTC)That or it could be a simple slip of the tongue on that one occasion, but I'm pretty sure I've heard Appalachians do the [k]->[t] thing before.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 04:16 am (UTC)*applause*
*huge grin*
I LOVE "Battle Hymn of the Republit"!
What a fabulous reinterpretation of one of my favorites. My husband's comment on watching the vid w/out your commentary: "He must have been doing that for YEARS...favorite that for me."
His hands run over the keys like water. And that grin at the end! Thank you!--how did you stumble across it?
no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 09:41 am (UTC)