Bodies of Song

Common wisdom holds that music is a universal language. Every culture seems to share the use of voice or creation of instruments with which to create melody and manipulate sound. One distinction, however, can be made that seemingly few pieces of music, when compared to the amount that is recorded over any given year, will stretch across time and touch people in other generations. In the case of Europe, or it's descended cultures, classical composers such as Beethoven, Handel, and Bach have enjoyed most of the limelight in terms of historical longevity. Popular music, on the other hand, seems to come and go without notice.

But an exception to this rule seems to exist within the world of Jazz. There is a catalog of songs that nearly all Jazz musicians and singers are able to perform, commonly called Standards. These tracks help to form the basis of Jazz as a genre as well as a musical technique. Songs such as "When The Saints Go Marching In" and "In A Sentimental Mood" have been played, altered, and recorded for many years, and likely will not disappear.

One song, however, holds a deeply unusual place; a piece of music with lyrics that often don't match the tune, almost deranged in it's happy mood when considering it's subject matter. It was originally known as "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer." It's best known today by it's adopted and accepted title: Mack The Knife.

The origin of the song lies in the hands of a pair of musicians and Socialist commentators: Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Brecht and Weill began performing a show in Berlin called The Threepenny Opera during 1928, shortly before the rise of Nazism. The inspiration for the show was an 18th century musical known as The Beggar's Opera which was a commentary on the state of the British monarchy. Like so many others in showbiz, Brecht and Weill updated the show's premise to reflect the world of Post-WWI Germany, but in this transformation, a sharp and ugly thing occurred. In The Beggar's Opera, the character Macheath was a dashing hero in the spirit of Robin Hood. Under the satirical gaze of Brecht, Macheath went from a romantic thief to that of a violent sadist who killed children, raped young widows, and would be described in his introduction as more like a shark than a man. In an irony fitting of Weimar Republic-era Germany, the song was not initially slated to be in the show - it was added to sate the vanity of it's original performer.

The Threepenny Opera was performed over 1,000 times by the time the duo of Brecht and Weill had left Germany in 1933. Little did they realize how one song, written almost as a joke, would leave an indelible mark on music history.

What is interesting about "Mack The Knife" is how it has mutated over the years. In it's original form, the song is not a happy one. Here it is performed in it's original German by Christopher Lee:



This version falls into sharp contrast with how it is best remembered. Beloved singer Bobby Darin in many ways made a career off of the song, and Jazz Legend Ella Fitzgerald received awards and accolades for her rendition. In yet another ironic twist, during her star-making performance of the song, she forgot the lyrics and had to ad-lib her way through it in Berlin.



Yet most modern performances that are not in the mold of Darrin or Fitzgerald have attempted, through this generation's darkened filters, to bring the song closer to it's original intention. For the film and subsequent album September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill, singer-songwriter Nick Cave performs "Mack The Knife" with a nearly-demonic aplomb.



The myth of Mack The Knife, a serial killer with a body count matching many actual modern madmen, is is fixed within the soundtrack of Western Culture. The only thing remaining to be seen is who next unearths his murder ballad and releases it back into the ears of an unsuspecting world.