Happy Cinco de Mayo, y'all! Try as I might to find some classy humor per this South of the Border occasion to party hearty, it was all politically too incorrect. About the tamest one was about the twin Mexican brothers that were on the same firefighting squad...to help tell them apart they were called Hose A and Hose B.
As I said, gave up that search pretty quickly.
Cinco de Mayo is not to be confused with Mexico's Independence Day (September 16); rather, it's a celebration of the Mexican militia's defeat of the French army at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. 4,500 beleagured Mexican militiamen took on the dressed-to-impress and drilled French soldiers numbering some 2,000 more. Mexico had gone through the social and political wringer for decades, notwithstanding the Mexican-American war in the late 1840s.
Even with the Puebla victory, celebrations were cut short as the ticked-off Napoleon III sent an additional 30,000 troops to (basically) take over Mexico for their long-running failure to repay significant debts owed. Within a year, the Mexican militia was whooped, and the French gained solid control of Mexico City, installing Maximilian as ruler of Mexico. That, too, was rather short-lived, as civil and political unrest festered and boiled. Maximilian was executed by the Mexicans a few years later.
Anyway, that's the gist of the Cinco de Mayo celebration, a more regional celebration even within Mexico and a bastardized commercialism here in the States, something we seem to be all too proficient at doing. Some people need an excuse to party, some don't.
Speaking of the Battle of Puebla in 1862, if you happened to note the previous blog (Foster's "In the Merry Merry Month of May"), that song was penned in 1862, as well. First thing I think of is the irony of it all...writing upbeat songs about dabbling in hillside springs in a carefree manner...at a time when well over 35,000 Union and Confederate troops died in the May-July Peninsular Campaign around Richmond/central Virginia...later that summer was the Second Bull Run bloodshed, followed that fall with the Battle of Antietam. Just a select few of the carnages that took place that year...
Not trying to depress ye faithful readers today, but Stephen Foster's death was most untimely and tragic...cut short at age 37. Don't need to go into all the details here, so you can read about it on Wikipedia if you wish. Interesting to note through history the renowned individuals, be they composers, artists, scientists, writers, etc., whose earthly lives ended prematurely in impoverishment and tragedy.
One of his musical legacies was played before millions last Saturday with the running of the (oh-so-muddy) Kentucky Derby. Foster published "My Old Kentucky Home" in 1853.
(chorus)
Weep no more, my lady,
Oh weep no more today!
We will sing one song
for the old Kentucky home,
For the Old Kentucky Home
far away...
1 comment:
I remember having to study and "celebrate" (in the American bastardized form of course) Cinco de Mayo in gradeschool. 5th or 6th grade as I recall ... we made paper sombreros and broke open the papier mache piñatas we’d made the week before in "art" class. Yep, the teachers’ and the room mothers’ excuse to "party" and cancel classes for the afternoon ... we kids sure didn’t know, we just went along with the plan ... and hey, "no class that afternoon", a bunch of 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds, you know we were all over THAT!!! How unbelievably wrong though, ugh --- "no class" (from our adults), THERE'S the operative phrase.
Interesting irony about (to quote you here) "writing upbeat songs in a carefree manner ... at a time when well over _______ troops" (and civilians) died. History unknowingly (or 'knowingly') repeated itself throughout the mid 60’s to early 70’s when just about every song on the AM radio dial was happy, sing-songy, love-y "bubblegum pop". Quite likely to get the public’s mind off of the Vietnam War. A notable exception to that though, being one of my favorite songs, John Lennon’s "Imagine" (1971, I think).
Suzy :)
Post a Comment