I hum a great deal. Not really humming exactly, there’s a rhythmical aspect to it, kind of a “bum-ba-dum”.
Bum-da-dum dum dum dum dum…
Going up the stairs to work, filling out forms, waiting in grocery lines, cleaning the house. Bum-ba-dum. It’s a bit like having a personal soundtrack.
In many cities, this would be considered a problem. I’m lucky enough to live where we gently ignore one another, automatically assuming that people who seem to be speaking to themselves are either on the phone or listening to music - without accusatory questioning.
Sometimes my colleague at work begins to hum a tune and I join in, though this kind of thing is not inherently communal. Bum-da-dums are short in nature, just a phrase or a chorus meant to bridge a particularly harrowing gap from one moment to another.
It could be any tune: pop song, classic rock, jazz standard, traditional hymn, classical favorite, but the best are soundtracks, tv theme songs, and musicals.
At one point I was going to write movie soundtracks. That was going to be my job, to grow up or whatever and then write music for money, earning enough to eat and purchase a most tasteful little bungalow somewhere.
So I wrote a lot of music. For my birthday, my mother bought me an “As Seen On TV” box set of Disney albums, and I played The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Robin Hood over and over and watched every musical I could, which meant they had to be on TV in the 1970’s, so they were either
* black and white films where Mickey Rooney and sometimes Judy Garland got their friends together and “put on a show” in an old barn (that they always seemed to have free access to) in their small town, or
* CinemaScope spectaculars practically made of colors, where streetfuls of extras in full costume danced energetically in ever-widening crane shots.
Music men, funny girls, British nannies and feuding New York City street gangs filled our cramped little screen, the peal of soaring brass and inspiring voices coming from the portable set’s three inch speaker. It was magical.
Then I hit Rogers and Hammerstein. The Sound of Music was on every year, and I attended a Catholic grade school whose nuns spoke of Maria as if she were a MARVEL superhero. Watching in 6th grade, I finally understood who all those soldiers were, due to my history class’s recent WWII unit… information that, for me, made the most hummable movie in the world much less hummable. Alas, Rogers and Hammerstein were not my brand. I still feel that Carousel is more disturbing than Sweeney Todd.
The absolute bottom for me was Seven Brides For Seven Brothers due to another history class, this one in high school, where we learned the full story of the Sabine Women, a distinctly un-hummable tale that soured me on the whole genre for a little while.
I found my way back with How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, which a local station must have purchased the rights to for a year because it played every month.
And then, my local PBS station was proud to present Singin’ In The Rain, which, for all practical purposes, became my Hamilton.
My mother wanted me to have an actual job, but she was very encouraging about the whole writing music stuff. As previously mentioned, it was my grandmother who actually composed music, and she was distinctly NOT encouraging about the entire category.
My grandparents often traveled to other big cities in the U.S. as delegates, sometimes meeting congresspeople or senators or Vice Presidents. They had a selection of knick-knacks from all over - most of them painted lumps of ceramic, and the most treasured of which was their “hula-girl” made with a hidden spring in the middle.
A couple of these trips were to New York City. I was incredibly proud to learn that they stayed in the Algonquin Hotel, my absolute favorite due to its association with Dorothy Parker. It was during this trip that they were gifted front row tickets to one of the hottest shows in town, starring talented unknowns Ben Vereen, Melba Moore, and Diane Keaton, and it was a musical.
Grandma wanted to play Carnegie Hall. I believe, though she never admitted this, that her dream was to stand in front of an orchestra and conduct her original works. If her dreams had been realized, she might have lived in Sugar Hill, Harlem as the most square of the zoot suit set, the modern day female African American Tchaikovsky. So to be in that room with the live band playing music, before that curtain went up, must have been a heady moment.
The musical was Hair, and you most likely have heard the music, but there are several reasons they haven’t performed it at your local summer stock or you didn’t catch the movie on tv. Skipping its heavy political content, at the end of the first act the entire cast sings a rousing and life-affirming ballad, then promptly takes off ALL of their clothing, standing naked in the spotlights, right at the edge of the stage.
How different my life might have been if my grandparents had been gifted tickets to West Side Story. I learned about this experience as an adult, but always had wondered why
– my Grandmother had refused to teach me piano,– only begrudgingly acknowledged my singing,– was totally against me moving to the East Coast after high school,– and mentioning the word “Broadway” in front of my her seemed equal to taking the Lord’s name in vain. Actually, slightly worse.
For 15 years I worked two-and-a-half blocks away from Times Square. Sometimes during lunch I would go take sideways peeks at my childhood dream.
Then I learned how expensive it is to heat or cool a giant four story room every night, and pay the electricity bills, and other key aspects of Broadway economics. I also became familiar with the full spreadsheet of costs involved in creating a motion picture, much less those necessary to distribute it.
You can write songs in your bedroom, play them to folks at a coffeeshop, record a full album at home and distribute it on the internet for almost nothing. With staged or filmed musicals, all those songs and dances are still mere frosting on a cake made of Pure Business.
So I’ve composed a great deal of performance intended music, but none marketable enough to pay the rent on a midtown theatre or hire an army of cinema union workers. But they’re good to hum, which is what I do, walking through New York streets, jauntily “bum-da-dum”ing my little tunes, soundtracking my own life, if (at present) nothing else.
I may not be wowing the masses, but neither am I morbidly shocking scores of little old ladies, so that’s a kindness.
