Home » Cole Porter in the time of hiv – Daniele Cassandro

Cole Porter in the time of hiv – Daniele Cassandro

by admin

The great dreamers by American writer Rebecca Makkai, released this year by Einaudi, is an ambitious novel about the impact that the AIDS crisis has had on an entire generation. It is ambitious because its 536 pages are reminiscent War and peace with their continual shift from a universally shared big story to the little stories of a crowd of gay Chicago mid-1980s protagonists, young lawyers, activists and creatives. The great dreamers is the choral story of a crisis, of a monstrous social injustice and of a collective awareness, but above all, with its narrative poised between the eighties and 2015, it sheds light on the scars that the AIDS emergency has left on the bodies and lives of those who survived.

As I was reading it this summer it came back to me Red hot + blue, a 1990 compilation of pieces performed by various artists to raise money for people affected by an infection that the media around the world continued to call “the gay plague.” Red hot + blue it was not We are the world. He was not a generic charity album dripping with good feelings and full of greasy calls to generosity. The artists who chose to join the project exhibited themselves personally. 1990 was the worst year of the crisis, but also the one in which LGBT associations around the world made their voices heard louder. Silence = Death, “Silence = Death”, we read on the banners of the many events. In the United States, let us remember, people died of AIDS at home, often alone, abandoned by families and friends, because health insurance companies refused to cover the medical expenses of the so-called at-risk categories. “It was like having spent seven years in the trenches,” says Fiona, one of the protagonists of Makkai’s novel, “except that no one will ever give you a medal.”

See also  Riot police already present en masse for Navalny's funeral: “Wear a face mask or hat”

Red hot + blue was born from the work of John Carlin, an entertainment lawyer, who in the late eighties had the crazy idea of ​​creating a collection of Cole Porter songs sung by pop stars of the moment to raise funds to distribute to the most active in supporting people affected by the HIV virus. Hence the name of his non-profit organization inspired by the title of a well-known musical by Cole Porter from 1936, Red hot & blue. As well as being the musical that featured the delightful song It’s de-lovely, Red hot & blue it was the story of an exuberant former manicurist, Nails O’Reilly Duquesne, who invented a charity lottery for the rehabilitation of former inmates.

What it makes Red hot + blue a memorable and extraordinarily cohesive album for a compilation is precisely the choice of Cole Porter, perhaps the most witty, cultured, brilliant and prophetic songwriter in the history of American entertainment. It is remarkable how songs written between the 1920s and 1940s manage to be current and very entertaining reinterpreted by rappers, songwriters and pop stars of the early 1990s.

The album opens with I’ve got you under my skin which, entrusted to rapper Neneh Cherry, becomes a sort of prologue. We start with a rap in which Cherry talks about a virus that spreads with the speed of the blink of an eye and that could lurk “under the skin”, under the skin of each of us without us noticing. What Frank Sinatra sang was a very sensual love song becomes a hymn to safe sex. Neneh Cherry keeps very little of the original text focusing on one Cole Porter verse in particular: “Use your mentality, wake up to reality”, Use your head and wake up.

See also  General Secretary Xi Jinping's remarks on historical and cultural heritage and natural heritage-Domestic News-Jellyfish Network

The ductility and modernity of Cole Porter’s songs adapts to very different styles: the Malian singer-songwriter Salif Keita resumes Begin the beguine, stripping her of her colonial exoticism to bring her back to Africa. Annie Lennox caresses with extraordinary sensitivity Ev’ry time we say goodbye, a song about saying goodbye that in the context of a generational massacre such as that of AIDS becomes particularly effective. U2 have an easy game: they choose one of Cole Porter’s most memorable songs, Night and day, but by I don’t know what miracle they manage not to crush it but, on the contrary, they handle it with the delicacy of a Murano glass blower. Sinéad O’Connor takes up the sensual and dreamy You do something to me, with an arrangement very similar to that of Marlene Dietrich’s version of 1939. Unlike Dietrich, however, Sinéad sings it as if she were a child enchanted by some magic, by that “voodoo that you do so well”, that voodoo you know do so well. Erasure and Jimmy Sommerville take us to the disco with a synth pop version of Too darn hot and a disk reread of From this moment on, while the Jungle Brothers manage to mix jazz and hip hop in their irreverent but spectacular reassembly of I get a kick out of you. Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop steal the show with their grungy, punk take on Well did you evah!, a song made famous by the film High society of 1956. Iggy and Debbie’s high society is the underground New York of the homeless, the junkies and the drug addicts in which they wander around like a ragged, hallucinatory version of Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

See also  Arnold Schwarzenegger thanks Colombia for putting him #1 on Netflix

kd lang with his flawless interpretation of So in love brings us back down to earth and transforms the most classic of love songs into a collective elegy for missing persons. When he sings of arms that clasp to embrace the void and says: “Torment me, hurt me, deceive me, abandon me but I am yours until I die” we understand that this is a song for a great love that no longer exists. Is exactly So in love which brings us back to the great theme of Rebecca Makkai’s novel: that of the void, or rather of the voids to be filled today with the shared and reasoned memory of what happened.

Various Artists
Red hot + blue
Chrysalis, 1990

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy