Saturday, October 20, 2007
Band Beautiful
One of the Youtube 1930's contributors has found an unspeakably splendid clip of an obscure all-girl band called the Ingenues. The clip is from 1928, recorded with rather primitive sound equipment on a track that seems to have degraded over the years, but the sheer talent and versatility come through all the decades incorruptible.
I'm not sure why this one little clip moves me so deeply.
It's not just nostalgia, because this style belonged to my grandparents' generation; it was already passé to my parents. I never saw anything remotely like it when I was young, so it's not a memory; movies like this weren't available by any methods or means.
It's partly the music itself: at that point American popular music was still descended from the classics. You can hear the influence of Sousa, Strauss, and Dvorak in these pieces.
The key seems to be exuberance + discipline, a rare combination. We've lost that combination, I think. We still have plenty of discipline in symphonic orchestras, and we have lots of raw screechy emotion in the popular realm, but we no longer comprehend that joy and glory can emerge from a perfectly organized and synchronized 'mechanism'. Mozart and Bach comprehended this emergence.
= = = = =
Sidenote after a bit of searching in the IMDB site: looks like this clip is not available anywhere else; it appeared a few years ago on Turner Classic Movies, but isn't on any available DVD's or tapes. ¶ 7:37 PM
One of the Youtube 1930's contributors has found an unspeakably splendid clip of an obscure all-girl band called the Ingenues. The clip is from 1928, recorded with rather primitive sound equipment on a track that seems to have degraded over the years, but the sheer talent and versatility come through all the decades incorruptible.
I'm not sure why this one little clip moves me so deeply.
It's not just nostalgia, because this style belonged to my grandparents' generation; it was already passé to my parents. I never saw anything remotely like it when I was young, so it's not a memory; movies like this weren't available by any methods or means.
It's partly the music itself: at that point American popular music was still descended from the classics. You can hear the influence of Sousa, Strauss, and Dvorak in these pieces.
The key seems to be exuberance + discipline, a rare combination. We've lost that combination, I think. We still have plenty of discipline in symphonic orchestras, and we have lots of raw screechy emotion in the popular realm, but we no longer comprehend that joy and glory can emerge from a perfectly organized and synchronized 'mechanism'. Mozart and Bach comprehended this emergence.
= = = = =
Sidenote after a bit of searching in the IMDB site: looks like this clip is not available anywhere else; it appeared a few years ago on Turner Classic Movies, but isn't on any available DVD's or tapes. ¶ 7:37 PM
