Surprised by song

The late Mickey Rooney had a smooth, very serviceable singing voice; check out his 1948 version of Rodgers & Hart's Manhattan on YouTube. Perhaps it's not so surprising, really. Lots of Hollywood folk in those days could and did sing, as well as dance. Up to the fifties and beyond, it was part of the skill set of many  performers. (The other singer, though, in this Manhattan number was lip-synched.)

When I mentioned this at the checkout desk at the library, prompted by a nearby timely display of some of his movies, it wasn't to denigrate today's performers, but it must have seemed that way. The young woman with crisp features checking me out was studiedly neutral. Very evenly, she noted that some of today's performers do sing. We mentioned Les Miz, as an example. But that singing was news, I said, whereas before it had taken for granted. A middle aged guy with a white mustache leaning nearby on the counter chimed in agreeding with me. Vaudeville, he said; those actors came out of that tradition of live variety entertainment.

I walked away with lots of movies and music tucked under my arm, thinking about the reaction of the young woman (I want to say 'girl' because she was so much younger than me, but she must have been in her twenties.) Perhaps she's tired of old gaffers like me deploring the decline of the current generation. What next? she might wonder. Today's performers illiterate, inarticulate? We boomers are already monopolizing the wealth space; why not the cultural space too?

Today's music is very different in style from that of Rooney's era. That  music was explicitly written for singing, not proclaiming. Harmony was valued, as was wit in the lyrics. One could whistle the melodies. Yes, yes, old man. You've just dated yourself. I confess I really don't know how much these are a part of the songs of today. I'm sure I don't know even what I don't know.

But the more interesting question for me is singing itself as an activity. Our anatomy hasn't changed. A surprising, by today's standards, number of people trusted their voices in publicly recorded song. Rooney may have started with an ordinary voice, and just trained it. Singing was an important part of his career; he dueted with Judy Garland and others.

Singing could be a much bigger part of our lives, but too often we respond to any suggestion that we sing by demurring: "You'd be sorry if I opened my mouth." Are our voices really so bad, so incorrigible, or have we lost some faith in them, perhaps in our songs, perhaps in song itself.

Still the young woman must have seen in me one more Other spouting off about his generation. She knows how to damp down her affect in order to not provoke further ranting--especially with a mustachioed generational henchman nearby. A good strategy for working with people we disagree with--I do it myself sometimes--but it's no door to conversation. As I walked away, I was sorry I hadn't offered a better one.