"Crazy Rhythm here's the doorway.
I'll go my way, you go your way.
Crazy Rhythm, from now on we're through!"
Sight singing a very rhythmically complicated piece can be so exasperating! We were reading through a piece for the broadcast next week and pulling our hair out! This piece was written in 12/8 meter with segments fragmented in duple meter punctuated with syncopations in random places. First off, it was difficult to read with so many unusual tied notes and accidentals. Secondly, the harmonies were ultra-modern and not normal for us. Thirdly, singers probably deserve the reputation that they are not "musicians" when they complain about doing vocal calisthenics! Once we got better acquainted with how to decipher the writing, it became easier. But then, once you "get it," the crazy rhythms won't leave you alone!!!!
"Here is where we have a show down.
You're too high hat, I'm too low down.
Crazy Rhythm, here's good-bye to you!"
Like a worm that gets into your system and takes a firm hold, rhythms sometime take hold and won't let you alone. I love the old 1920's tune "Crazy Rhythm" because the lyrics are so apropos. When a crazy rhythm has got me, I get to the point where I want to just kick it out of my brain! The music in my head can be DEAFENING!!!
"They say that when a high brow meets a low brow
Walking along Broadway,
Soon the high brow, he has no brow.
Ain't it a shame, and you're to blame!"
Sometimes classical musical styles and popular styles collide. Occasionally, in choir we will sing popular songs carefully notated to reflect the highly stylized syncopations of a folk singer taking "liberties" with the melody. What the folk singer will simply feel, we are forced to "read." Talk about difficult and tricky! You wouldn't believe all of the tied notes and syncopated rhythmic notations! The music can look ultra complicated but when sung, it sounds very simple. That's what we have to go through to keep 360 voices exactly together. Those crazy rhythms! Sometimes they drive me crazy!!!!!
"What's the use of Prohibition?
You produce the same condition!
Crazy Rhythm, from now on we're through!"
Crazy Rhythm, I've gone crazy, too!"
P.S.
"Crazy Rhythm" is a thirty-two-bar swing show tune written in 1928 by Irving Caesar with music by Joseph Meyer and Roger Wolfe Kahn for the Broadway musical Here's Howe.[1]
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