Hobby - Update

Hobby - Little Navy 2030 updated [Link]

Hobby - Air Force 2030 updated [Link]

and to complete the Air - Land - Sea defensive posture [Link]


14 March 2013

Second Generation Immigrant

Bear with me, i would like you to follow the melody ...

And now, listen to a Gershwin's Composition.

Variations on "Facinating Rthythm"

& variations on "Lisa"

Composer: George Gershwin

date of composition: 1924

On the Radio programme: Rudy Vallee "Fleischmann Hour"

10 November 1932

On the piano: Gershwin himself !

Are you amazed at the similarity of the above two songs? Do you hear it?


Another one ... same formula, we start with the "hard" core :-)

That isn't very hard at all. Now enjoy Ella's vocal ...

My Man's Gone Now (From the opera - Porgy & Bess)

Composer: George Gershwin

Date of composition: 1935

Vocal: Ella Fitzgerald

Date of Recording: 1958

Jewish Influences ?

Gershwin's parents were Russian of Jewish descent, having immigrated to the USA. George was born - Jacob Gershowitz, on the 26 September 1898 in Brooklyn, New York.

The Gershwin's were not a particularly religious family though they surely must have interacted with kinsmen and participated in traditional festivities in a foreign land that they are determined to call home.

Social, cultural and aesthetic traditions of their Jewish race sets them apart from the majority of the immigrants from Europe, particularly western Europe.

The Yiddish language would have occupied a role, in his growing up years, for they recited the Torah in the language of the Jewish people that came from the central and eastern Europe. Yiddish traditional or folk songs. Yiddish cantillation (a form of singing out the words from the Torah/Talmud) must have featured regularly year after year for the young Gershwin during their religious celebrations. He had to inadvertently internalised the melodic voices of his people.

One wonders, was he aware of the Yiddish motif in his composition, or a subconscious invocation during the period of self absorbed, intense concentration that gave birth to the melodic tunes of the young America that we are familiar today.

George Gershwin was a second generation immigrant to the United States of America at the dawn of the twentieth century. Second generation immigrant - a category of residents that evoke debates in recent time on our small island republic. There was no National Service then in the US of A, at least not until the out break of WWII when America entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in the December of 1941. By then George had pass away for about four years. If he was still alive at the time, he would be in his early forties, even if he had volunteered, the US Army draft board may not take him due to his age.

His growing up years were spend mostly in Brooklyn  New York where his parents ran mom and pop shop and small time businesses. The Gershwin family shifted house sixteen times in ten years! He grew up like any typical city kid of his time and like any typical city kid, like to skip school. I don't think he attended any tuition classes when he was "schooling" as a boy. At ten, he took piano lessons when his parents noticed that he had a talent with the up-right they bought intending for the elder brother Ira to take lessons. He stopped school at fifteen.

George was a man driven by his musical passion. Very early on he was able to take a job as a song plugger at Tin Pan Alley. Being able to earn a living playing the piano as a song plugger at the ripe old age of seventeen, showed his passion and commitment at learning and pounding the keyboard even though he was so drawn towards music, a natural talent. If you were to ask Morris (George's father) to reveal some "tips" on how to bring up a child musical prodigy, you will draw a blank. Apart from his music teacher which had a positive influence in his musical formative years until the former died when George was twenty years old. There was really no other special master classes nor was he in the circle of the musically elite groupy when he first started out.

George Gershwin loved life. He loved America such that he gave the young nation a voice through his music. He was totally immersed into the America of his time, so much so that he took two years "time out" from his regular composition work with the studios and a twentieth century opera was born - Porgy and Bess. A "rojak" if you may, of the distinct American sound, an musical evolutionary leap, standing on the shoulders of the likes of Dvorak's new world symphony. He loved his country and America loved him back. He gave America a part of the core. He is an American core. The senior Gershowitz were determined to call America home. THIS is their home. They can't be packing up and going back to eastern Europe.

How can a country evoke such emotive loyalty and the people participates willingly in turn shaping the country into a nation? Maybe that era of innocence is gone, in its place an ever more sophisticated cynicism, a people jaded. Maybe during such times, we really need some old fashion?

Singapore, a symphonic suite, finale.
Composer : Tsao Chieh [Link]

Performed by the SAF Central Band

05 March 2013

Take a walk with me ?

Suicide is Painless.

I did not know the other name for the theme song of the hit TV series M*A*S*H 4077 was - Suicide is painless. Until recently.

Remember when i was barely less than a decade old in the 1970's. I caught a glimpse of this TV series at my grandparents' as my uncles were watching and i vividly remember the catchy TV theme. Due to my age, the hit TV series did not captivate me as much compared to the cartoons, and so i did not bother to watch.

Not until the early 1990's. There was a re-run of the M*A*S*H 4077, i remembered it was aired late night on Sundays right after another TV series that i eagerly anticipated - Northern Exposure. For a season or two, these two programmes capped a satisfying weekend and kept me looking forward to the next.

M*A*S*H 4077 went on air in 1972. It was based on a 1968 novel about three army doctors in Korea during the Korean War. M.A.S.H is an acronym for - Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The success of the series was very much a matter of timing. The Americans were in the midst of the Vietnam war, begining in 1965. By now, the general public sentiment towards the war was turning negative. A counter-culture was brewing brought in no small part by the educated, young, middle-class and the recent legislative victories of the civil rights movement in their decade. The time was ripe for a drama that deals with subject matter of war.

M*A*S*H 4077 departed from the familiar genre of war movies such as Combat (remember Vic Morrow), The Longest Day, A bridge too far and the like. By the 70's a significant population of the young, educated, cynical, attuned to the popular iconoclastic culture of the day, the intellectual appetite called for a very different narrative. A dark comedy based on a medical drama set in the Korean war almost two decades earlier. Nevertheless, the series provided much of the allegory about the Vietnam War. 

Body counts and body bags were the order of the day (the predecessor of KPI - Key Performance Indicators in todays' management speak). As casualties mounted, a sense of revulsion grew. The trauma of war was perhaps too much the young soldier could bear. Suicide - an option, for some.

Composer: Johnny Mandel

Listen for the bass guitar...

A time to heal.

The Vietnam War finally wind down in 1975. The soldiers came home, adjusting to a normal civilian life as best they could. They came home to a community bordering on resentment. For some, the damage was permanent. 

The movie - The Deer Hunter premiered in 1978. Three years after the indo China War. The main characters of the movie came home from the Vietnam War. It dealt with the mental consequences of the effects of prolonged exposure to violence and death. The incessant assault on their moral values when they were prisoners of war in Vietnam, some were stripped bare of their being human. I thought i remembered hearing some Chinese dialect (Teo Chew) being spoken by the NVA or Viet Cong soldiers as portrayed in the movie. How the ang mo directors trying to bluff us asians audiences by using any asian langauge LOL, or perhaps there really where Chinese soldiers! Correct me if i am wrong here. The scene was during the time when the three friends were POWs. They were imprisoned, submerged in rat infested waters for most of the time! And for entertainment, the NVA/Viet Cong capters would indulge in a game of Russian Roulette, at stake were the soldiers pay checks. The POWs were seated on opposite facing each other, one bullet was loaded into the revolver. "Jit liap cheng zi, puak seh si !" In teo chew, a southern chinese dialect which roughly translates: One bullet, to gamble life or death! One cannot imagine the psychological trauma the soldiers were put through.

The friends were rescued and made it back home. But for one, the post traumatic stress disorder was too much to bear. He was mentally damaged. Later, his buddy found him at a gambling den in Saigon. At stake was his friend's life in a game of Russian Roulette.

Here is the theme to the movie - The deer Hunter.

Cavatina

(Theme to The Deer Hunter)

Composer: Stanley Myers (British Composer)

Date of Composition: ~ 1970

Here performed by: John Williams (classical guitarist )

I first heard Cavatina, not from the movie, rather, from another Television programme ( i watched a lot of TV, sigh). A children's Art Programme that was aired sometime in the late 1970's to early 1980's.

The programme was called Take Hart. Tony Hart was a very creative and entertaining art teacher. I always looked forward to the afternoon "art lesson" once a week, after school. For i was momentarily transported to another world free from my school work. Sigh again.

You can hear Cavatina at 04:58 to 07:08

I also remember even till today, the main theme to Tony Hart's Take Hart.

Thank you for taking a walk with me. Here, i want to leave you with the main theme to a happy children's programme. i hope you find peace and joy and love.

Carry on living ...



04 March 2013