Let’s LAUGH!

It is a bright summer morning with the sun shining in a very atypical fashion for the usual London scenery. The good weather lifts the spirits all around and ​​I am merrily dancing and sweating at a Zumba class before I get to my practices as a serious professional musician. From the merciless speakers booming at hundreds of decibels, the thunders of Ricky Martin's voice are only physically bearable with some ear protection. The room is full with semi-deaf ladies, wearing the expected colourful leggings, matching tank-tops and high spec expensive trainers. A room full of a rainbow of what the Brazilians call "bunda gustosa". (Bunda equals bottom, gustosa = delicious). Before the explosion of the legging fashion and its sad spread outside the gyms all over the city streets, no one realised how many bundas gustosas there were in the world, nor how closely related we were to Fusaichi Pegasus, the 70 million dollar high quality horse. 

The mares are moving rhythmically under the words describing a woman who is into superstitions, black cats and voodoo dolls. Whilst I am moving my bunda, I am thinking about the equivalent of this composition’s main character in the Classical music repertoire. Well, the leggings are clear. That is the domain of the ballet dancers, of course, although perhaps in a more statuesque, lean and uniformly selected body shape. In ballet perhaps Odile, the Black Swan in Swan Lake, would be closest to any voodoo magic, although her bunda and its shaking would be a Universe apart from the moves of the chichitas in South America where Zumba originated, so ballet is a bit out of the question, at least in its classical form.

In the OPERA There might be a few more versions of the lady who encouraged Ricky Martin to live a crazy life. For a starter we have the sassy  Carmen - she did drive Don Jose mad with her red skirt, the cheeky flower in the hair and with her seductive moves. She was into superstition as well, although not much was said about black cats. There is a fabulous Tarot card reading scene in Act Two, in which the appearance of The Death card is the first sign warning all spectators to stay well away from the temptation to live la vida loca and women who are into magic.

There is no evidence Bizet, the composer who wrote Carmen ever went to Colombia to witness hot blooded dances, nor that he was aware of the positive effects of aerobics and the endorphins that make women laugh. I am not sure Jane Fonda and her aerobics were around at that time, although I know she has been going for some time…

Bizet was married to a slim, conservative, and highly neurotic woman, who had a very strong attachment to her mother - a very similar situation to the one Mozart was in.

In a striking contrast to his wife, the first singer to perform Carmen had the physical attributes of our Zumba ladies. She clearly liked croissants and cakes more than Madame Bizet did, and therefore had the voice and the moves to seduce the serious and determined  Don Jose, and Madame Bizet's husband.

CELESTINE GALLI-MARIE

Let’s face it: the connection between butter and happiness is unquestionable.

The women who will drive you mad, it would appear, like to eat. Turns out, food matters. Butter matters!

Rossini, the master of opera buffa (the funny operas), after his immense financial success as an opera composer, became a famous chef. His recipes were so yummy that his cooking fame took him to Paris. In Paris he created his famous Tournez le dos which we could translate as Turn your bottom. Want to know what it is? It is a sauteed filet mignon on buttered toast, topped with the mandatory slice of foie gras and truffles, and finished with a small pond of sauce made from veal stock. The sauce for it demands more butter,  Madeira, and chopped truffles. What a decadence! What a feast! Lots of butter and lots of laughter.

TOURNEDOS ROSSINI

There is not much evidence for laughing women during the times before the Great Revolutions. In fact, it was considered a lunacy to hear women laugh out loud and thosewomen would immediateltybe locked in asylums or pronounced witches and burned . Maybe some did, but that probably happened in secret societies, in secret locations, into the woods… who knows. Certainly the laughing girls were not allowed in public by their mothers as that would mean a public demise for generations.

From one such family predisposition with a very despotic mother came the soprano Anna Russel. Anna could have had an operatic primadona’s career should she not have had the misfortune of tripping into a stage set during an opera performance and falling flat on her face on the floor in a rather Charlie Chaplinesque style. Luckily, she took the embarrassment and the literate operatic collapse as a good omen and turned it into what would be the best singing and operatic satire to date. Her “How to write your own Gilbert and Sullivan opera” is a very useful tool for anybody who intends to become an opera composer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYCXO_FZj5k

This fifteen minute sketch will save at least two years of very expensive music college fees, and more importantly the need to deal with a whole bunch of frustrated lecturers who would very likely be vegans and therefore lacking any access to real butter and hence not interested in humorous affairs. Oh, back off! Yes, yes, I am aware that I am rude, that this is not politically correct, not very ethical, and perhaps offensive. It is generalising the liberal university faculties around the planet and that is wrong, but my intent is not to hurt feelings. My intent is to remind us that we can still laugh, and we often laugh about things that are slightly offensive. Slightly out of the puritanic virtues and political correctness of any society. Things such as bottoms, butts, falls and farts.

Once upon a time Queen Victoria tried to change that and to make things and laughter proper, but her success was challenged not only by the heavily buttered Parisian salons, but also by a young progressive Austrian man named Adolf who decided that there are more important things in the world than subjects for irony, with one such thing  being cleaning. After he himself was deprived of the opportunity to create a mess with paint, he decided that he would dedicate his life to a new mission and that mission would be to clear the world of impurities. Genetic modification similar to the ones available these days. With much decisiveness he quickly created a political party with a Scrubbing Service (SS) attached to it. The SS was a very diligent cleaning company who were looking under every surface for potential dirt. The general public liked them a lot and participated in their business with great enthusiasm. Concentration was key.  Cleaning is a serious business and the favourite composers of the SS CEO kept well away from laughter. They were focusing on fire, Gods, legends, heroes, big lengthy works of art…

However, despite the strength of the Arian SS L Mega Dissolving  Washing Powder several naughty socks managed to escape through the pipes. Those lucky odd socks made it to the New World and found refuge in a world of mixture of different languages and norms. There they could be as dirty - physically and verbally - as they wanted to be! They were safe - Hallelujah! and wanted to celebrate life, wanted to dream, to love and… laugh. In the post war times, entertainment was becoming the new vital force, the one that did not require lots of money or fancy titles. For our immigrants that was the niche. They were poor, but full of ideas and could play musical instruments and write funny songs. Outrageous songs! Songs that were politically incorrect, vulgar, vicious and sarcastic. Songs having nothing to do with reality and with no meaningful purpose attached to them. In the near past, still uncensored by political correctness, there was room for humour and fun and we can still enjoy some of it in the mad thoughts made by a Harvard mathematics professor who just happened to be a virtuosic pianist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY

These days killing an animal would be considered a clear sign of potential psychopathy with inclinations to murder and will immediately be reported to the police. At that point the minimum of seven police cars would arrive at the home address of the funny man. In a dramatic scene from Law and Order, one police officer will be questioning the poor entertainer whilst another thirteen uniformed vigilant protectors of the society would be witnessing the examination. In the meantime, at the other side of the street several properties would be robbed, a dozen cars would be stolen, several children would be knifed, but as the entire police force would be busy with the poor joker’s attitudes and stand towards animal welfare, the other minor crimes could wait. Eventually The Pigeon Killer would be charged with sodomy and will never be allowed any social media access. In order to control his chemical balance, he would also be banned from buying butter for life.

Tom Lehrer once commented on the liberal reforms in the Catholic church - the never ending and ongoing battle of that institution to find a way for public support for its inadequacy. He particularly liked the lifting of the century’s ban on eating meat on Fridays saying that was about time as it was odd that the Church would allow its soldiers to kill people on Fridays, but not allow them to eat their victims on the same day. In my opinion, the Catholic church - as they are still searching for the appropriate liberal changes - considering its strong body in Latin America should canonise Zumba and introduce it as part of the Mass alongside eating meat on Friday. Ok, ok, I am backing off. I know that’s too much. But is it??

The more serious refugee composers in America, the ones who could not let themselves, but also their mothers would never allow it, to be associated with pigeons and silly songs went to California and started composing wanna- be -symphonies which would be used in films. That worked and several decades later the film composer’s music is performed more often by the leading orchestras in the world than any other symphonic stuff. Isn’t that ironic and funny? Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams, Alan Silvestri and a few others really appreciate that fun fact with their unquestionable wit and sense of humour, as they look back to the future. The Avengers and the Superheroes of the contemporary music scene know how to laugh. And how to eat and live well. 

The Zumba class is over. The change of the hormonal imprint of the room and the high volume of dopamine and endorphins is tangible. The sweaty Betties are in a very good mood and ready for coffee and a croissant.

It is my time to switch off too. It was fun, but back to the serious stuff now. The Catholics, the liberals, and I will not be thinking of any butts in the next few days as it is very, very vulgar. Humorous it is not as the true sense of humour is always responsible, considerate, tolerant and not judging.

 And to add to that, no meat, no bread, and no butter. No, seriously!