And onto another Waltz. Another Jazz standard interpreted by a brilliant musician. With only two instruments – a piano and a voice – this song manages to exemplify everything that makes music and art meaningful. Let me explain.
Jitterbug Waltz taps into communal memories. The party is ending, and you want to go home. Have you been there before? Probably. The last dance of the night is a peculiar predicament; on one hand you want to sleep, yet on the other hand you want to keep the magic of the night alive. The lyrics of Jitterbug Waltz bring us right into the story with its use of vivid present tense constructions.
Jitterbug Waltz emulates a range of emotions. In fact the range of emotions the voice and the piano take us through borders on the cinematic. And we are hearing this range via a singer made of the finest substance. Cecile is a robust singer – it doesn’t matter what angle your ear catches her, you still feel her conviction and dedication to the sound. Listen to how she recreates the dynamic feeling of ‘lethargy interspersed with the fits of giddiness you get when you catch your fourth wind on a night that just won’t end’.
Jitterbug Waltz creates grand metaphors. It was not until I was in the act of writing this post that I discovered that Cecile’s rendition is simultaneously dramatising a metaphorical waltz between her ‘voice’ and the ‘piano’! Listen to the way Cecile’s voice interacts with the piano. Is this not a dance of two waltzing partners who are slowly but surely finding each other’s feet? For example, Cecile’s voice starts off slow and lethargic with long drawn out sounds compared to the piano’s preppiness, insistence and goading. But they reach a similar tempo at the end, a harmony, a union.
And in a grander sense, doesn’t this ‘metaphorical waltz’ serve as a larger metaphor for life itself? Perhaps we are all in an intimate jitterbug waltz with life? Life, with its boundless possibility is continually changing, consistently forcing us to shift tempo, to move in a different way, and adapt to a new rhythm. We are usually stubborn toward the change life relentlessly subjects us to – just like Cecile – because really, we would prefer to be in bed sleeping. But Cecile’s parting words of wisdom to us is to resist the urge to quit on life mid-dance, but rather to ‘Let the Waltz play again’. Sound advice, when think about it.
poetic reverb 