It is May, and time to write about this song: “The Lusty Month of May” from Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot.
First off, let’s talk a little bit about Camelot. I am specifically referring to the 1960 Broadway production, starring Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. It ran for 873 performances and won 4 Tony awards. The original cast album was the #1 album for 60 weeks! (Keep in mind that a year only has 52 weeks.) 

In 1967, there was a movieversion that starred Richard Harris (he was also the first Dumbledore),Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero. (Hmm. Nero and Redgrave have been married since 2006!) It was not good. Both Harris and Redgrave did their own singing. They should not have. Nero did not, but apparently didn’t communicate with this singer about what was funny and what wasn’t. “The Lusty Month of May” was done veerrryyy slowly. 

So, we are going to focus on the stage version and that original cast recording. I found it in my parent’s record collection sometime in the mid-1970s and was instantly hooked. When I was 17, the nearby community theatre company did Camelot. It was my first musical after Hansel and Gretel. I loved that show! My ardor was somewhat diminished by the fact that it was horribly hot that summer, with temperatures over 100. (Almost unheard of at the time in West Virginia.) And I was wearing neck to floor green velvet with a double layer on my arms because of the way the sleeves were designed. It was a gorgeous gown, but I was miserable in it. (A lot like this, but in a deep forest green.)

It was during the dance part of “The Lusty Month of May” that my lack of dancing ability became abundantly clear. I did finally get the “grapevine” move down, but that took a lot of work!

Tra la! It’s May! The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray.
Tra la! It’s here! That shocking time of year!
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear.
It’s May! It’s May! That gorgeous holiday, 
when every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad!
It’s mad! It’s gay! A libelous display.
Those dreary vows that everyone takes, everyone breaks.
Everyone makes divine mistakes.
The lusty month of May!
 
Whence this fragrance wafting through the air?
What sweet feelings does its scent transmute?
Whence this perfume floating everywhere?
Don’t you know it’s that dear forbidden fruit!
(A lot of Tra las follow)
 
Tra la! It’s May! The lusty month of May!
That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.
It’s time to do a wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day one you’ll always rue.
 
It’s May! It’s May! The month of “Yes, you may.”
The time for every frivolous whim, proper or “im.”
 It’s wild! It’s gay! A blot in every way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast amorous past,
Gaze at the human race aghast.
The lusty month of May!
 
Tra la! It’s May! The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray.
Tra la! It’s here! That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thought merrily appear.
It’s May! It’s May! The month of great dismay,
When all the world is brimming with fun, wholesome or “un.”
It’s mad! It’s gay! A libelous display.
Those dreary vows that everyone makes, everyone breaks.
Everyone makes divine mistakes.
The lusty month of May!

This is such a fun song for Guenevere and chorus to do. But it got me thinking: what is there about May that makes it particularly lusty? 
 
There are traditions involving May Day, or the first of May, in just about every European culture. These may all go back to the Greeks and the Romans. In ancient Greece there were several festivals that started with the first day of spring: 1 May. This was the day that Persephone returned to her mother, Demeter, after spending the winter months in the Underworld with Hades. 
 
In an short aside: according to Greek mythology, Hades, the god of the dead, wanted to marry Persephone, a lovely young maiden and the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Hades got permission from his brother, Zeus, the head-god, and abducted Persephone. Her mother, not knowing what had happened to her beloved daughter, caused all the growing things to die—thus, fall and winter. Finally, Zeus agreed to allow Persephone to return above ground, but only if she had not eaten anything. Turns out that she had eaten 6 pomegranate seeds. So, Zeus ruled that she could spend 6 months above ground with her mother and 6 months below with Hades. This gave us the four seasons.
 
So, Persephone returning to her mother is definitely a cause for celebration. But where does this idea of licentiousness come from?
 
That is another Greek festival, this one dedicated to Dionysus and Aphrodite. Dionysus was the god of wine, poetry, and theater. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and sex. While the celebration over Persephone lasted only a few days, the one for Dionysus and Aphrodite was much longer. Held only every three years, it lasted all month and was marked by theatrical events, drunkenness, and orgies. The lusty month of May indeed!
 
When we lived in Germany, each village had its very tall May Pole that was put up the evening before May Day. Men stood guard around it all night protecting it from men from other villages who would come and try to pull it down. Also, that night, young men would get cans of white paint and draw a path from their door to the door of their sweetheart. 
 
On May Day itself, there were festivals and parties with the young women weaving complex patterns with the streamers attached to the very top of the May Pole. 
 
I think it snowed here on May Day this year. 
 
Do you have any May stories? Why do you think it’s a lusty month? Let me know in the comments below. I’ll be posting some spring/May songs on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.
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Until next time!

Not long ago, I was listening to Laura Brannigan’s hit “Gloria”, and was struck with its similarity to Helen Reddy’s song “Delta Dawn.” Both are songs about women who hear voices in their heads. The way each presents the song leads you to believe that these two women have some sort of mental illness.
That got me thinking about how we represent mental illness in music. 

First off, let me climb onto my soap box. We, as a society, have a terrible stigma when it comes to mental illnesses. And yet, mental illnesses are like any other illnesses. Most have a physical cause, such as a chemical imbalance that can be helped with medication. 

I have high blood pressure caused by my kidney condition. I have been taking medication for almost 25 years to keep my blood pressure under control. Every so often, the numbers begin to creep up. This is the cue that it’s time to tweak my medications. Or, over time, I can build up a resistance to one medication or develop a reaction to another. Each time, it can take a bit of time to find the right mix of medications to bring my blood pressure back under control. 

Many mental illnesses are the same as my blood pressure: controllable by medications, but it may take some time to find the right mix. Often, weekly therapy can be a part of that mix when something more than just medications is needed. There is nothing wrong with needing therapy to keep functioning. I have been in and out of therapy since I was 9. When I was a little girl, to be honest, it was my mother who needed therapy and not me. But I have since realized that a part of her illness was an inability to recognize that there was something wrong with her and not with me or the rest of the world. This inability to see your own illness is called asognosia and is not uncommon.

It is time to take away the stigma and the shame and focus on everyone living their lives as best they can without fear. The Arts can be a welcome outlet and can help change people’s misconceptions about mental illnesses. Music should be at the forefront of this fight. Is it?

The two songs I mentioned at the beginning of this blog are older. “Gloria” is from 1982 and “Delta Dawn” was a hit in 1972 for Tanya Tucker on the Country charts and again for Helen Reddy in 1973 on the Pop charts. But there are others. 1966 brought us the very popular “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.” A quick search has shown me that several songs by The Ramones, Ozzy Osborne, Aerosmith, and many, many others deal with mental health. 

Just pouring through what’s out there is enough to bring on a bout of depression. And before we go on, yes, I do suffer from depression and PTSD. The depression is the result of chemical imbalances in my brain. I do take medication every day for that as well as for my blood pressure. The PTSD is the result of trauma caused by my mother and my first husband. So, I’m not just saying that. The amount of songs that deal with mental illness are staggering – and I ruled out all the crazy-in-love types.

I’ve written before about the power of words: how our words matter. They can hurt and they can heal. I try to not use the words crazy or insane anymore. Occasionally one will slip out, but it’s a work in process.
We, as a society, can do better. 

I’ll very carefully climb off that soapbox now. (I am afraid of heights.)

​If you know me at all, you know that I was not close to my mother. She was a difficult woman. She suffered from several mental illnesses that she never acknowledged. There were always things wrong with other people, the world in general, or, often, me. This could have been sheer stubbornness, or it could have been something called asognosia. Asognosia is a complete inability to recognize illness in yourself. It is not stubbornness but it an illness in itself. With this condition, the part of the brain that is capable of seeing the illness does not activate. 

I know this now. I can see that she suffered from this along with her other illnesses. I suppose that this helps me to have a little bit of compassion for her. It does not really help with all the things that she did to me. I lived with her verbal, mental, and emotional abuse for years. I have been in and out of therapy since I was 9. 

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. We are supposed to honor our mothers on that day. Hmm . . . I’m sure that there are good things I could write about her. Unfortunately, when I was 17, she told me that she hadn’t liked me until I hit 16. That kind of negated what I had thought of as happy memories from my childhood. I know that I should not let that statement dictate what I can look at as happiness, but that’s easier said than done.
But, I do have this: she was my first voice teacher. 

I have been singing my entire life. I sang vocal exercises with her when I was in my playpen. I sang in my first choir when I was 3—you had to audition to get in. (Who auditions 3-year-olds?!?!) 

When I was 9, we went to see my first opera: La Boheme. I was hooked. I was going to be an opera singer. Mom had received classical voice training as a child and younger woman. (She was 34 when she had me, so she was 43 at this point.) She had picked up a lot of bad vocal habits in the intervening years, but she gave me a really solid foundation.

She had already taught me how to stand: Feet about shoulder width apart, one foot a little in front of the other, back straight, head slightly tucked. (That was the extent of her knowledge on stance. I learned more later.)
But then we got into proper placement and raising the soft palate to achieve high notes. We started working out of our Broadway songbook (I still work out of this book!) and her copy of Classic Italian Songs. (I still have this, too!) And, because I insisted, we worked on “Musetta’s Waltz” from Boheme. I was 9. Not something I would recommend for a child of that age, but I was determined. In later years, I discovered that my mother’s grasp of Italian pronunciation was, shall we say, not good. She did her best.

I found out that she was not really comfortable teaching me. She was afraid that she would pass her bad habits along to me. I must say that as a first voice teacher, I think she did a really good job. I loved the times we spent singing together.

When I was 12, we went shopping. Elkins (a small college town in West Virginia) had one department store at that time, so pickings were limited, but we found matching denim maxi skirts and blouses that coordinated without being too matchy-matchy. We then put together a show. I played the guitar on several of our songs, and there were even a few songs where I played the piano. I remember how proud I was to accompany her on the piano. Most of our songs she played the piano, sometimes singing, sometimes accompanying me. I loved doing that. I loved putting the show together. I loved the few performances that we booked. 

She wanted to go into the local nursing homes and senior centers. There was one nursing home and one senior center. So, once we’d performed for them, we’d kind of used up our possible venues. Looking back, there could have been other places, but my mother wasn’t capable of finding them.

Months of planning, costumes, and practicing all used up in two performances. We were asked to do seasonal programs at the nursing home. This eventually led to a volunteer slot for me as a teenager. I would take my guitar into the wards and private rooms and sing for the patients. I also continued with the seasonal programs and parties. Sometimes I left my guitar at the office and helped with reading mail and writing letters. 

I have some amazing memories of those times. I got to know a woman who was 103 years old. Zita had a great sense of humor. She had the rest of them convinced that she was stone-deaf. Yet, when I went in with my guitar and started singing for her, her hand would start to tap in rhythm, and once she actually starting, very softly, singing along. 

Or there was Otto. He was a wizened little old man originally from Austria. He always wanted me to sing “Edelweiss” for him. And every time I did, he would sit with a lovely smile on his face with tears pouring from his eyes. He said that it reminded him of his home. I always thought how wonderful it was that a song from a Broadway show could affect him so deeply. Every time I work on “Edelweiss” with someone, I still think of Otto.

There was the woman who had had a Broadway career. She had been discovered by Frederick Loewe of Lerner and Loewe fame. Her family had come from Elkins, and when she retired, she had returned there. She was always fun to talk to. I wish I could remember her name. I remember everything else about her so clearly.

So, there are some happy memories about my mother. She helped to open the world of music and performing to me. She helped to give me the idea of how to find venues for performance. I know that living in small towns was not what she wanted. She felt stifled and frustrated. I know that she did the best that she could, even if that was seldom what I needed. 

I’ll be playing some of my early repertoire on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.

Happy Mother’s Day.

I think it was the spring of 1978. My mother was teaching high school English. The school year was winding down, and the principal came to her with a huge dilemma. The school’s band director was refusing to allow the band to play for graduation. We never did figure out how that man got away with everything that he got away with. He had punched a student in full view of students and other teachers earlier in the year, and nothing was done to discipline him! Then, come the end of the year, he refused to allow the band to play for graduation.

The principal had come to my mother because he knew that she was something of a singer and might be able to come up with a musical solution. She came home and asked me if I could play Pomp and Circumstance on the piano. (Pomp and Circumstanceused to be played at every graduation as the students marched in. I have no idea if this is still done.) I was not thrilled at the possibility of returning to that school to play for graduation. (I was finishing my first year of college.) I suggested, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that she could use the “Star Wars Throne Room March” instead. To my surprise, she took me seriously. That year’s graduating class marched into the gym to the Throne Room March. I did end up returning to the school, since it was my album, and she needed me to drop the needle at the appropriate time. 

When I was teaching my children about the concept of the leitmotif (Leitmotif is German and should be pronounced light-moteef), I used Star Wars music. What is a leitmotif, you ask? Miriam-Webster defines a leitmotifas: “an associated melodic phrase or figure that accompanies the reappearance of an idea, person, or situation especially in a Wagnerian music drama.”

Richard Wagner (Ree-card Vahg-ner—he was German) was a composer who lived through most of the 1800s. He divides people perhaps more than any other composer. Wagnerian operas are huge; the use of more than 100 instrumentalists is not uncommon. Some people love his operas, while others liken them to people screaming at the top of their lungs. And his political leanings were beyond questionable—Wagner was horribly anti-Semitic. And his music became a favorite with Hitler. 

However, Wagner changed music and theatre in some surprising ways. Before him, you went to the theater to be seen, not necessarily to see, or hear, what was being performed. The lights in the “house”—the part of the theater where the audience sits—were kept on. Wagner wanted his operas to seem like a dream that you were having, so the lights had to be turned off. 

He also took the concept of the leitmotif and ran with it. And this is where John Williams and Stars Wars music come back into the picture. John Williams used the leitmotif in composing music for Star Wars. We hear bits and pieces of these motives weaving in and out of the soundtrack.

Williams has composed roughly 50 themes so far for the Star Wars series of movies. “Luke’s Theme” has become one of the most widely-known themes in music. While it was originally written for the character of Luke Skywalker, it now is used as the main theme for the series and for acts of heroism. Toward the middle of the “Throne Room” music, timed to coincide in the credits with George Lucas’s name, we get “Luke’s Theme” reprised.

The use of leitmotivscan give us hints of where a character is going. There are hints of “The Imperial March” hidden in “Anakin’s Theme” in the movie The Phantom Menace, showing us the darkness coming for Anakin, with just a touch of “Luke’s Theme” thrown in for good measure.

There are about 11 themes used in each Star Wars movies, making them among the most complexly composed movies out there. Williams has not composed all the music for every Star Wars property. Music for the series such as The Clone Wars,the various video games, and the spin-off movies, like Rogue One, have been composed by other people. But, because of the treasure trove of themes composed by John Williams, the others are able to give us music that still sounds like a part of the whole.

There are a handful of composers alive today that I feel are geniuses who deserve to stand with the greats of the past. I feel that John Williams is one of these. Comments? Let me know what you think. I’ll be playing some of my favorite Star Wars/John Williams music on my Minnich Music Facebook page, so please be sure to check them out.

May the Force be with you!