clap clap blog: we have moved


Monday, February 07, 2005
This isn't the MIA post, but let me offer you a brief equation formed at the show Saturday night:

(Chorus of "Pull Up The People") = (Ending of "My Man's Gone Now")

Specifically, the way she says "poooooooor" as compared with this bit from the below-referenced Gershwin article:

Performing in the climax of that scene, the soprano Ruby Elzy was widely praised
for the savagely beautiful aria “My Man’s Gone Now,” which concludes with a
rising cry that Davenport characterized as “a wail, a minor arpeggio for which
the composer’s direction is glissando”: a tragic pendant to the tipsy clarinet
of “Rhapsody in Blue.”

This is it: Gerhwin to MIA, beautiful sadness transmogrified into giddy triumphalism. The blues' variations on tragedy moving through jazz's mimesis towards hip-hop's all-embracing comedy. And standing on top of it all, here we have MIA, mimetically describing tragedy in the service of a very real comedy. In a glittery lightning-bolt pantsuit, no less. (Pic via Amy.)