Shakespeare and popular Music by Adam Hansen,
2010. Read in May-June 2011.
Those
of us who grew up in the western music culture of the 50’s and 60’s no doubt remember
the song “Just like Romeo and Juliet”. Do you remember who first did it? Well,
I didn’t but now I know because this book told me. It was the Reflections. That’s about the only
song they did. But it certainly wasn’t
the only song produced with Shakespeare connections. There are four columns of
songs in the index that are mentioned in this book.
Hansen
sets out to show how his two passions, Shakespeare and popular music, relate,
or more importantly, to prove those wrong who claim that they don’t relate and
never can. He does this admirably. It’s a
fun book with a lot of “Oh yeah, that one!” – for example Peggy Lee’s “Fever” (“Romeo
loved Juliet, Juliet she felt the same. When he put his arms around her he said
‘Julie, baby you’re my flame, thou givest fever”) and Springsteen’s “Point Blank”
(“I was gonna be your Romeo you were gonna be my Juliet. These days you don't
wait on Romeo's you wait on that welfare check..”) and Donavan’s “Under the
Greenwood Tree”.
But
Hansen goes back a lot farther than that, starting with Shakespeare himself who
included a lot of what has to be called popular music in his own plays.
One
chapter deals with how popular music is used in today’s Shakespeare movies, for
example Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet or Julie Taymor’s Titus.
Another
chapter deals with Shakespeare and jazz by which Hal and I were inspired to
order Cleo Laine’s Shakespeare and All That Jazz and Duke Ellington’s Such
Sweet Thunder. We learn further about British rap artist Akala who runs
workshops on Shakespeare.
Hansen
also explores Shakespeare in county music, punk and world music. And as always when
it comes to Shakespeare, there seems to be no end to it. Hansen ends his very enjoyable book with the wise
words: “This is something to celebrate, not lament, as Caliban counsels: ‘Be
not afeard’…And the beat goes on…”
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