so i wrote a song and it goes really fast, too fast to sing comfortably. so i'm singing it anyway, trying to find ways to meld the syllables so i can flow. i'd been listening to the way roxanne ashante raps so loose, she really blurs her words together beautifully. and what i found was that the easiest way to get all the syllables in was so really get down into my accent. i mean my own new hampshire/east los angeles/brooklyn way of speaking. the words were tasty.

i also sang from the pit of my stomach (a tense stomach) the way kurt cobain said he did, and the combination of these techniques made something i can be happy with. can't wait to do this to an aria!

so here's my thought: enough of this italian language fascism. all languages are important and tasty, but the route to that experience comes through one's own native language. there are so many accents in this country! ren woods singing "aquarius", or jollie holland singing "lakes of ponchartrain", and if you listen to mathieu chedid singing "belleville rendezvous" in english through his french, he makes the english words so interesting through his intimacy with them.

how are you going to dig into some verdi recit. without having done the same in your own vernacular?

some american operas make this possible, even if we don't take advantage of it. how many times have you heard an opera singer sing summertime as if it was french? i know i know, it's way up there, that's gershwin's fault. when mozart started writing singspiel, i'm sure his singers felt like they were singing an italian opera in german, which they were, but because of their persistence, wagner was eventually able to write something that took advantage of the german literary and song tradition and was still opera, and even extended the resources of opera. when tchaikovsky wrote evgenii onegin everyone called him an italian, but if you listen to galina vishnevskaya sing tatiana, she sounds like a contemporary russian, not someone singing in a foreign language.

i would say bernstein's candide is a european opera with english words, a good start. stephen sondheim, also good. hair and west side story... those don't take full advantage of our opera heritage, much less the developments of modernist orchestral writing, but they're authentic social commentary, which is completely necessary, and they also use many of our american musical resources - electric guitars, native uses of the voice, american dances... what could we do now with the resources that we have?! dj's and banjos!