PASSION, DRAMA, HEART: This week’s Boost: Milva and the Aster Piazzolla quintet perform “Balada para un Loco.” Then, if you have time, I offer liner notes, including an English translation. Loose BoostLast week I sent out a heartfelt and yet lengthy explanation of my process composing and organizing music for the film, “Tomb of Joseph.” Though many people read it, I had several who observed that it was awfully long. I will try to send out smaller bite-sized bits because I would guess you, like me, are inundated with information. As my dear friend Baxter Black has told me many times lately, “Hal, you make things too complicated.” That is why this week I give you a simple recommendation for a musical video to watch, a performance bursting with heart. I can’t help adding a few liner notes. Music and HeartsDo all hearts beat the same? How different is the sound heard when I press my ear to your heart than what I’d hear if I could listen to the heart of a Ukrainian soldier about to go out on a dangerous mission? Would I hear his pride of homeland, the fear of death? What is the sound a baby hears as she suckles from her mother? All music has some relationship to the beating heart because that is what unifies us, the beating heart of life. Milva (1939 - 2021), Maria Ilva Biolcati, was an Italian singer and superstar. Also known as La Rossa (Italian for "The Redhead"), she performed on musical and theatrical stages all over the world. You might hear a bit of Edith Piaf in her magical voice. Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (1921 –1992) was an Argentine tango composer, arranger and virtuoso bandoneon player. His music revolutionized traditional tango and brought in what is termed nuevo tango, a music that incorporates classical and jazz elements. Tango and Buenos AiresThough Tango is popular all over the world there is no place it fits better than its home in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I don’t know of another place you can slip into a retired chocolate factory late at night, a place converted to a dance pavilion. It’s 11pm and you wait and wait for the musicians to arrive. Finally at 1am the dancing begins and magic reigns. This song, translated as “Ballad for a Lunatic,” also fits Buenos Aires like a glove. This is a city where the mental state of every porteño (resident of Buenos Aires) is a major topic of discussion. I’ve heard that the per capita money spent for psychoanalysis is greater there than any other place in the world. “Balada para un Loco” or “Ballad for a lunatic:”an English translation Music by Astor Piazzolla, lyrics by Horacio Ferrer Spoken: The Buenos Aires evenings have that I don't know what, did you see? You come out of your house, by Arenales. The same as always, the street, and you … When, suddenly, from behind a tree, I appeared. A very strange mixture of the penultimate tramp and the first stowaway on the trip to Venus: half a melon on my head, the stripes of the shirt painted on my skin, two half soles stuck on my feet, and a taxi free flag raised in each hand. You're coming to pieces!.... But only you can see me: because the mannequins are winking at me; the traffic lights give me three blue lights, and the oranges in the grocer's shop on the corner are throwing orange blossoms at me. Come! so that thus, half dancing and half flying, I take off the melon to greet you, I present you a taxi flag, and I say to you... Now I know that I'm crazy, crazy, crazy... You don't see the moon rolling along Callao; that a gang of female astronauts and young boys, waltzing, are dancing around me...Dance! Fly! Fly! Now I know that I'm crazy, crazy, crazy... I look at Buenos Aires from a sparrow's nest; and you, I see you so sad...Come! Fly! Feel!.... the insane obsession that I have for you: Insane! Insane! Insane! At nightfall in your native loneliness, to your bedside I will come with a poem and a trombone to unveil your heart. Insane! Insane! Insane! I will jump like a demented acrobat, over the chasm of your cleavage until I feel that I have driven your heart mad with freedom... Now you're going to see! Let's go out and fly, my beloved; raise yourself up to my very dream, super-sport. let's go and run on the cornices with a swallow in the engine. The applaud us from Vieytes: "Hurrah! Hurrah!", the lunatics who invented love; and an angel, a soldier, and a little girl give us a dancer's waltz. The beautiful people come out to greet us... And I, a madman, but yours, what do I know?: cause belfries with laughter and in the end I look at you and sing , very quietly, Love me like this, crazy, crazy, crazy... Make drunk this tenderness of madmen that exists in me, put on this wig of sky-larks and fly! Fly with me now! Come, fly, come! Love me like this, crazy, crazy, crazy... Open up the loves that we are going to try, the magical utter lunacy of coming to life again... Come, fly, come! Tra la la lalala! (Shouted) Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Insane she and insane I... Insane! Insane! Insane! Insane she and insane I! Bertram, Banjo, Bandoneon: “B” words, allI credit Bertram Levy with sharing this YouTube link with me. He is leader of a group called Tangoheart. I love the name of the group because Tango music, though quite complicated, is really about the throbbing heart. Bertram is a heart-filled musician whether he is playing banjo or bandoneon. I first met him in 1968 in Menlo Park, California where he just happened to live across the street from my brother Roger. It didn’t take long to figure out we were spiritual brothers. In fact, at one time, we performed as the Normal Brothers, Sub and Ab. Bertram splits his time between Port Townsend, Washington, where he is building a wooden boat, and studying and practicing bandonion music in Buenos Aires.
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The Heart of Music
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