09/14/2024
America is a melting pot in the best sense. At its best it is most delicious and yet you can savor all the ingredients. All of them.
I made a discovery recently -- after a lifetime of listening to it -- from the score of West Side Story that really captures this.
Long but I hope interesting post, with a YouTube link to "America" at the end.
In the late 1950's, Leonard Bernstein was struggling with Candide, and then heard a conversation about the struggles and conflicts experienced with Mexican immigration into the US. He lived in New York, and the immigrants were largely Puerto Ricans.
He and Jerome Robbins had been talking for quite a while about doing a musical on a Catholic/Jew conflict to work out ideas of love against the backdrop of fear, hate, and tribalism. (Just fifteen years after the end of World War II, we can call it also a backdrop of racism.)
This notion of a New York challenge of tribalism, modeled after the Capulets and Montagues of Romeo and Juliet) resonated with them both. Hence the birth of West Side Story, with a dream team that included the young Stephen Sondheim.
One of my most recent Eureka experiences came to me from hearing the beloved song, America, from West Side Story. After a first act of beautiful, powerful, almost concert-like music, the second act explodes with this Rita Morena-led piece about the opposing nostalgia for the "lovely island" of Puerto Rico and the land of hope, the isle of Manhattan.
I had always felt the obvious compound meter of America (3 +3 followed by 2+2+2) which churns up the energy like spinning dresses churn the air. In music from African (and as translated through "Southern Cone" music as from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Brazil) such patterns and their variations are signatures for certain dances and styles and the key to getting the style right -- literally, the "clave" -- is the timing of beats with subtle syncopations. The one Bernstein is using is from north east Mexico, called Huapango, often heard in the Caribbean (but not specifically Puerto Rican, but let's not get stuck on the details). The first part of the song is a 2+3 clave played on the instrument called "claves". Calysta Cheyenne
But the Eureka experience for me was the harmonies of the song. Take out the clave and just listen, and imagine it with French horns and trombone and trumpets. It's a set of "Spaghetti Western" chords -- which means, as these things evolved, it's a lot of Aaron Coplan from Billie the Kid and Rodeo. (Copland and Bernstein were friends.)(Dmitri Tiomkin also contributed to this sound, and indeed had a lot of clave-esque elements in his rhythmic elements, but they were not claves per se.)
So, the clave plus the Western cowboy music come together in this vibrant, conflict-driven, incredible set piece that captures the love of the immigrant's roots and the passion for the American experience.
Steven Spielberg’s award-winning, critically-acclaimed “West Side Story,” is now streaming on Disney+.Nominated for 7 Academy Awards® including Best Picture,...
