I Love to Singa

I love to Singa

          In 1936 Warner Brothers produced a Merrie Melodies cartoon short about a little crooner owl who called himself Owl Jolson.  He was born to German parents who were traditional classical music buffs, just like Al Jolson’s 1927 classic movie, The Jazz Singer.  Like in that movie, he was cast out for his musical preferences and found his way to Gong Productions (now you know where Chuck Barris got his Gong Show from), where he competes in a singing contest run by Jack Bunny.  He wins first prize and all is patched up with his family, who sways to the sound of his crooning:

I love to sing-a

About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a,

I love to sing-a,

About a sky of blue-a, or a tea for two-a,

Anything-a with a swing-a to an “I love you-a,”

I love to, I love to sing!

          I have always loved this little cartoon and I have learned that it has had a strong cult following for years.  I thought about it for the first time in a long time last night while I was attending a function that my wife was putting on for an organization, whose board she leads.  That organization is called Singnasium and it’s a school for singing that has as its motto “All Singing, No Drama” and as its mission, “Keeping the arts alive, by helping vocal artists thrive”.  The organization is run by the crowd (including my wife) that are the main driving force in the cabaret community in New York.

          Cabaret is something I had heard of for many years but never really experienced before meeting my wife.  I, like most people, thought of cabaret like the 1972 movie Cabaret by Bob Fosse and staring Liza Minelli and Joel Grey.  That was set in the early 1930’s in the beginning of Nazi Germany and the Kit Kat Club was a happening place to mock the growing National Socialist movement and growing anti-Semitism.  I had no idea what cabaret in NYC was really like, though it does still mock the growing nationalist and anti-immigrant, anti-Semite and Islamophobia we now live in. Liza Minelli is now the Goddess of cabaret.  Her words are imbedded in the walls of Don’t Tell Mama, the Duplex, Feinstein’s, the Carlyle and the Laurie Beechman:

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret        

          So, at this Singnasium event there were a combination of potential donors (mostly friends of mine from the investment world) and some cabaret singers.  Besides the board of Singnasium there were several students and one world-famous cabaret singer of some renown.  The students read testimonials about the joy that cabaret singing brings to their lives and then sang a favorite song.  The stories are as good as the songs in cabaret, so it was quite moving.  One student made me think about Owl Jolson.  She had spent her life as a Reformed Rabbi who got her singing through her Cantor duties in temple (how’s that for a Jazz Singer story…and now I’m talking about Neil Diamond in the movie remake).  She finally left the Rabbinate specifically to pursue her love of singing.  Wow, she must love to singa.

          The world-famous cabaret singer was Sidney Myer, who Theater Pizzaz says is “the droll, witty, wistfully androgynous, totally endearing, past, present and future cabaret virtuoso who’s attracted unparalleled admiration and respect for his unique delivery of quirky ditties and poignant ballads.”  Sidney is good friends with my wife and Lennie Watts, who is Mr. Cabaret and the chief cook and bottle-washer of Singnasium.

          I have broadened my life so much by virtue of being introduced to cabaret by my wife.  I am her biggest fan and am in charge of filling the house for her shows (which I wish she would do more of).  Cabaret is no business for old men or any men or women for that matter.  It is an art-form, but not a business.  If I fill the house for every performance by my wife, we stand a damn good chance of breaking even.  Cabaret is done by those who love to singa.  That is what Singnasium tries to do…make cabaret a bit more practical for people by helping them thrive in their art-form rather than just treating it as a black hole for spare change.

          I have no idea if Singnasium is helping build strong financial cabaret bodies in twelve ways like Wonder Bread, but it does give its students and teachers an outlet to pair up and serve each other’s needs.  It helps the teachers pay the light bills and it helps the students find their souls.  That’s not a bad bargain for both.

I even got a chance last summer to sing at my wife’s birthday cabaret show. I spent a month learning David Cassidy’s “I Think I Love You” and learned that memorizing lyrics is a lot harder than I imagined. Then remembering the lyrics while you are on stage is a challenge. And then remembering what to do with your hands is important. And then remembering to smile and project to the audience doesn’t hurt either. In other words, cabaret is not easy. I struggled over one song and got sympathy points for being so much a fish out of water, but my wife has to know a dozen songs, remember the patter and make it all entertaining while not breaking a sweat. Turns out there’s more to cabaret than meets the eye. But my experience did teach me one more important thing. I do love to singa.