Allen Ginsberg on Aristide Bruant continues from here
AG: So one thing I want to suggest is that the tone of voice is amazing, I cried when I first heard it. It sounded like such great… like a time-capsule, and some kind of joyousness from before World War 1, you know, like before.. before everything closed down, and the earth got too crowded, and everybody began murdering each other for real (on a) massive scale. – One thing interesting about that – You also get it in Marlene Dietrich and Lead Belly – at least.. those people, certainly, are geniuses – at least to my ear. I don’t know if you know all those singers. (Ma Rainey was the teacher of Bessie Smith and Bessie Smith was the teacher of Billie Holiday – and I guess Ray Charles learned from all of them, and probably Bob Dylan learned from listening to all of those, particularly Bessie Smith). But there is some kind ..some taste of genius in their sense of time, I think, some judiciousness in the.. where they stop and where they begin, that they’re really in control of their time, of the time of the song, like (with) that bell [Editorial note – in Bruant’s ” A Montrouge “ – Allen sounds out the melody – “dum-da-dum da-dum-da-dum-da-dum…”, noting the final “klang”!) – No, it’s really, you know, like, they’re not in a rush, they’re not scared, and they’re playing with the time. They’re hearing in the time, relaxing in the time, playing with it and catching on to it. I think that’s what makes them so attractive and so brilliant. It’s some simple common sense in relation to time itself (which means that they’re relaxed, they’re observing it pass, they go in and out of it, they know when to pick up and when to stop – like getting on a train when it was moving, sort of… getting on a train that was moving slowly enough, so there’s no problem). In this case, not too much strain. Also, because there’s a slow down of the sense of time – (that is, no panic – or, if panic, at least panic that’s understood and being played with and not…not freaking them out) – But, basically, no sense of over-hurried panic, because they’re dealing with something real, their own relaxation in the time, and they know the song, and they like the song, and they like to sing (like he (Bruant) likes to sing, you can tell) So therefore when he cuts into the time, he cuts through with very clear pronunciation, when he says “amoureuses”, (sic) it’s very clear French -[to Students] (Who speaks French here? – what does ”amoureuse” mean?) – [Editorial note – it’s possible that Allen is mishearing/conflating here – “A Montrouge” and “amoureuse” ? – Bruant does have a song – “Nos Amoureuses“, but…]
Student: In love (basically)
AG: Yeah, Lovingly, in love …
Student: (Love)…
AG: Yeah could you understand much of the words of it?
Student: No…
AG: Too old? the thing is too old, huh?
Student: (“sans culottes” I heard!)
AG: Yeah “sans culottes”! – what is cou..? What is cou..?. – “sans culottes” -” they showed off their ass”, (or something like that). It’s kind of dirty too, (clearly) human.
But anyway his pronunciation is for 1912, despite all the difficulty of hearing it for.. what is it now?.. almost seventy years, over seventy years, seventy-five years, three quarters of a century, going back in time three-quarters of a century [Editorial note – now over a century!] You can still hear a certain definitiveness of the voice, that he’s speaking very clearly, and he.. (I don’t know what they had for amplification in those days – they didn’t, so he would have to, then, speak clearly enough for a large music hall for maybe five hundred, or a thousand, or seven hundred people, to hear every single syllable and every whisper). So there’s, like. a definite sculpture of sound in time he makes, Like, the words are physical, and he knows that if people are going to hear, he has to speak it really clearly, has to combine relaxation in his own natural voice with some projection into space, and, as you can see, such pure clear projection of the voice into space that, also. somebody was struck by it, so much that they wanted to preserve it into time. So the projection.. because of its clarity went out into space, and it also went out into time, so that we can hear it. I mean, unless you were being so definite, melodiously definite and emotionally definite, mouth-wise definite, vocally definite, nobody would have thought to record it and want to preserve it in time, but just by the elemental clarity of his song-speech, it prompted someone to want to record it and preserve it in time. So, in a sense, the clarity made its own way through time, the definiteness made its own way through time, the definiteness attracted sentient consciousness to take action to skip it forward, to pass it on in relay, so that we can hear it . I mean, I don’t think he sat up brooding at night thinking “How can I be heard In 1986?” (sic) Somebody who is interested in sound and in preservation of sound heard him and said, ”This sound is worth preserving” – It certainly is.
to be continued
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately two-and-a-half/five minutes in and concluding at approximately ten minutes in]