The Spoken Note

Recs & Revs 15

“Bani Adam” (Sons of Adam) from The Gulistan of Saadi. (Unknown calligrapher.)

Combinations of spoken word and music resonate with me. Maybe because I so often listen to music to set moods for the imaginative reveries that feed my writing, I’m accustomed to hearing in my mind spoken language over or under music. What I like can take varied forms – and not one of them is William Shatner substitute-singing in speech. Back in 1999, to offer one form, I founded the Say the Word spoken word and poetry festival at Los Angeles Southwest College, still going at 25 years – and to the best of my knowledge, the sole remaining of my accomplishments as department chair: (Ozymandias). For that first iteration of the festival, I sought the help of L.A.’s World Stage in Leimert Park Village (now under the directorship of the extraordinary jazz vocalist Dwight Trible, who at the time worked at the college with me). I hired three musicians to provide musical accompaniment, in best Beat poet fashion, for the two featured, professional poets and the student open mic readers. I wrote a poem for the occasion, too: an occasional poem – “Say the Word.”

Sometimes the spoken word is found sound, recorded real-word speech joined to music in various ways, as is the case with my first offering below. Sometimes it is speech recorded specifically to have music laid over it or integrated with it. My second offering, the inspiration for this edition of Recs & Revs, is an example of music laid over. The third offering integrates the recorded speech in a number of different ways.

By Simon & Garfunkel - Album Art Exchange, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48438205

Simon and Garfunkel’s 1968 Bookends album, including most famously “Mrs. Robinson,” from the film The Graduate soundtrack, and “America,” was their fourth studio recording and was generally considered in its accomplishment to have raised them to among the top of pop-rock artistry. Its first side, full of wistful nostalgia with the losses of time and aging, contains the recorded speech collage titled “Voices of Old People.” It is positioned between “Overs,” a song conceived for The Graduate but unrecorded for the film, about a relationship that has grown tired with time or age, and a reprise of the opening “Bookends” theme, now a full song with lyrics.

The voices were recorded by Garfunkel in New York and Los Angles, at the United Home for Aged Hebrews and the California Home for the Aged. They provide in themselves an emotional jolt of poignancy. The vocally dramatic high point comes in a purposeful confusion of voices that loses clarity, in which a statement is attempted about the nature of the relationship of mothers and children, and out of which one deeply feeling woman asserts emphatically, “That is mother's life, to live for your child.” (It is a line that produces particular effect on me, as the voice, in its passion and confidence, is reminiscent of my mother’s, even as an old woman. Though my mother worked from my very early childhood onward, out of desire and from family need, it is a sentiment she expressed one way or another throughout her life.)

I have set the YouTube video of the entire album to begin with “Overs,” so you can hear both the tone it delivers and its gentle transition into “Voices of Old People” and then that track’s slide into “Old Friends” followed by “Bookends.” The YouTube won’t fully embed, but if you double click, you’ll hear on ton YouTube. If you are unfamiliar or it has been a long time, it is very much worth it.

Man 1: I got little in this world. I give honestly without regret, one hundred dollars for that picture. I remember taking a picture with...

Woman 1: Ooh! Let me show you. Let me show you our picture. This was me and my husband when we were first married

Woman 2: I always slept on one side, left room for my husband

Woman 1: And that's me when we were sixteen

Woman 2: But this, this, this, this is not the case. I still do it. I still lay on the half of the bed. (pause) We used to sneak in...

Man 2: Still haven't seen the doctor I was seein'; there's been blood for the last, eh, forty-eight hours, and I can't get up the mucus for the last, eh, two, three months... oh yes, and I maintain, I maintain strongly, to this minute, I don't think it's an ordinary cold

Woman 3: God forgive me, but an old person without money is pathetic

Woman 4: Children, and mothers, that's the way we have it. A mother-- they are [mumbling]

Woman 5: Cause mothers do too much

Woman 6: That is mother's life, to live for your child. (pause) Yes, my dear

Man 3: I couldn't get younger. I have to be an old man. That's all. Well...

Woman 7: Are you happy here, honey? Are you happy living with us?

Man 3: So anytime I walk with Lou and... that's all

Woman 7: Mr. Singer? Are you happy living with us here?

Woman 8: But we don't do that, dear

Woman 7: But are you happy?

Woman 8: If you mean, if, if you could say, yes, and I thought, and I was so happy, and everybody, "What is this? What is it?"

Woman 9: It just is, beautiful. Like, just a room. Your own room, in your own home

A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes
Of the old friends

My second offering is by an Iranian-born British musician. It employs the accented voice of his aging father reciting the work, with his own English translation, of the medieval Persian poet Saadi.