Word: songful
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...usually opens on a serious note, a protest song that may be Jerry or Darlin' Cora or Tol' My Captain. He goes on from there to shouters (Lead Man Holler), love songs (I Do Adore Her), songs of thanksgiving (Merci Bon Dieu), an Israeli Hora (Hava Nageela). Belafonte has developed a remarkable emotional pantomime to match the content of his songs. In John Henry, he hunches his tall, lithe body (6 ft. 2 in., 185 Ibs.) in a half crouch, knots his fists, launches into the verses with teeth clenched and a spasmodic toss of his head...
...quieter moods of such a song as Scarlet Ribbons he may stand perfectly straight, his head and shoulders pinned by the spotlight, lips eloquently pursed. In Sinner's Prayer, his face contorts in anguish; in Mark Twain it breaks wide in gutty laughter. When he attacks Love, Love Alone, a comic number, he often throws his arms wide, pivots in an arc from the waist and wobbles his head to the rhythm while he delivers the calypso lyrics with an impudent grin...
Rattler & Friends. What Belafonte sings is not strictly folk music. He takes folk songs as starters and collaborates with Conductor-Composer Robert Corman, lyric writers and arrangers to make the special regional words and symbols of the songs meaningful to a wide audience. It is an audience he has virtually created for himself, because folk music has never before had mass appeal in the U.S. To protesting purists, Belafonte replies: "All folk songs are interpretations. Otherwise you might as well go back to the first time and say 'ugh.'" He takes a tape recorder with him wherever...
After going through the Belafonte process, the song will appear in a forthcoming RCA Victor album in this form...
...idea of what he was jugged for. The play presents several couples who appeal to the judge for divorces, and do not get them. Then somebody else comes in and complains about his wife, while nobody (either onstage or in the audience) listens. Then two musicians sing a song, and that's all. At the end, none of the characters is any better off than before, and neither is the audience...