Himes and Union Avenue Opera collabo on Gershwin classic
By K. Curtis Lyle For the St. Louis American
In the third or fourth phase of his illustrious career, Miles Davis recorded an album called Porgy and Bess. The title didn’t indicate that he was playing the music that George Gershwin had created for the great folk opera, or that Gershwin’s collaborators had been his brother Ira (who wrote the lyrics) and DuBose Heyward (the author of the original novel and the librettist and co-lyricist of the opera).
The cover of the album shows Miles sitting on a high stool, one leg raised and propped on a rung; his right hand curled around his raised trumpet; the left hand sitting under his iron jaw as if holding up the breath of the world. It simply says “Miles Davis Plays Porgy and Bess.”
Porgy and Bess was a high point in his recording career. Although he would record more acclaimed orchestral jazz works – Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead come immediately to mind – Porgy and Bess presented a challenge that he would never undertake again. How to put character, place, time, intention, imagination and motion into a musical context was the challenge that was presented to Miles at the pre-recording session.
Later in his life he swore, literally (and he could swear with the best), that this kind of playing was, simply, too hard. He would never return to this kind of music again.
The four principle roles of this piece of great American theatre are Porgy, Bess, Sportin’ Life and Crown. Each has achieved archetypal status in the difficult cultural mix and remix of the working out of the American artistic, cultural and political voice.
Porgy, of course, signifies the power of character, especially where the opera opens. He takes in a fleeing Bess as she and her lover Crown are caught up in a killing. Porgy is a cripple, and Bess is beautiful and the woman of another man, a dangerous man. But, Porgy ignores the politics of the moment to extend the glorious hand of generosity and commitment. This is character.
Bess is the siren of place. She is the ground upon which home becomes hearth, the good and beautiful woman who makes fallow ground rich. She is mother and daughter – the depth and fertility of the mother, but also the desire and potential of the daughter.
The inhabitants of Catfish Row comment on the positive change in Porgy since Bess has come to live with him. James Brown said, “Time brings ‘bout a change.” Sportin’ Life has always reminded me of James. His impishnes and his relentless energy are his natural challenges to every canon and creed. Remember, it was James who changed everything when he decided to go on the one instead of the two. He turned the world upside down simply by going from the downbeat to the upbeat.
Sportin’ Life’s challenge comes in the song, “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” This is perhaps the greatest ode to skepticism in American popular song. The classic line “the things that you’re liable to read in the bible, it ain’t neccesarily so” pretty much sums up the power of time.
Crown has escaped from the police and disappeared. He reappears in scene four, act two, during the song “I hear Death Knockin’ At De Do’.” There is also a terrible storm raging. Crown’s intent is to take Bess away from Porgy. He also displays the unconscious power of challenging nature itself. As the storm rages and the inhabitants of Catfish Row make ready to flee, Crown scoffs at the storm and the attendant warnings, singing, “If God Want To Kill Me He Had Plenty Chance.” Crown’s plan is the pattern of human stewardship gone over to the madness of challenging the very nature of things.
These archetypal constructs are hard to portray because they take up so much energy. After the artist has invented them, met them and then portrayed them, they don’t just go away. They go inside of you. That’s why Miles found it so hard to encounter and collaborate with them and then interpret them.
They were created by Gershwin, and Gershwin and Heyward. They went beyond the control of their creators. They slowly pervaded the culture. They now live their own lives as archetypes. They belong to whomsoever will entertain, nourish and support them.
There is a great vision in act one, scene two, in which imagination and motion are on full display. The man Crown has killed in an argument over a crap game is named Robbins. He lies on a bed in his wife Serena’s room with a saucer on his chest to receive donations for funeral expenses. The vision of a dead man collecting donations for his own funeral is a real picture of how the imagination continues to create motion, forever.
Theater written by white men portraying the intimacies of black life became an almost toxic formula for social debate, confrontation and even chaos in the second half of the 20th century. At the dawn of the 21st century the debate has not lessened, but seems now to have been digitally propelled (as has everything else) into the age of the internet, where everything seems to finally be up for grabs. George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, originally, grabbed all this energy from out of the world of the archetypes.
Ron Himes will co-direct Union Avenue Opera’s production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess August 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26. The theatre is at 733 N. Union Blvd. Call (314) 361-2881.
