Ragni Mp3 Songs
Hilke Mcnally
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The work reflects the creators' observations of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, and several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy.[1] The work broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-In" finale.[2]
After an off-Broadway debut on October 17, 1967, at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and a run at the Cheetah nightclub from December 1967 through January 1968, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances. Simultaneous productions in cities across the United States and Europe followed shortly thereafter, including a successful London production that ran for 1,997 performances. Since then, numerous productions have been staged around the world, spawning dozens of recordings of the musical, including the 3 million-selling original Broadway cast recording. Some of the songs from its score became Top 10 hits, and a feature film adaptation was released in 1979. A Broadway revival opened in 2009, earning strong reviews and winning the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical. In 2008, Time wrote, "Today Hair seems, if anything, more daring than ever."[3]
Rado and Ragni brought their drafts of the show to producer Eric Blau who, through common friend Nat Shapiro, connected the two with Canadian composer Galt MacDermot.[14] MacDermot won a Grammy Award in 1961 for his composition "African Waltz" (recorded by Cannonball Adderley).[15] The composer's lifestyle was in marked contrast to his co-creators: "I had short hair, a wife, and, at that point, four children, and I lived on Staten Island."[8] "I never even heard of a hippie when I met Rado and Ragni."[4] But he shared their enthusiasm to do a rock and roll show.[4] "We work independently", explained MacDermot in May 1968. "I prefer it that way. They hand me the material. I set it to music."[16] MacDermot wrote the first score in three weeks,[7] starting with the songs "I Got Life", "Ain't Got No", "Where Do I Go" and the title song.[2] He first wrote "Aquarius" as an unconventional art piece, but later rewrote it into an uplifting anthem.[7]
Hair underwent a thorough overhaul between its closing at the Cheetah in January 1968 and its Broadway opening three months later. The off-Broadway book, already light on plot, was loosened even further[23] and made more realistic.[24] Thirteen new songs were added,[23] including "Let the Sun Shine In", to make the ending more uplifting.[7]
By 1970, Hair was a huge financial success, and nineteen productions had been staged outside of North America. In addition to those named above, these included productions in Scandinavia, South America, Italy, Israel, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.[34] According to Billboard, the various productions of the show were raking in almost $1 million every ten days, and royalties were being collected for 300 different recordings of the show's songs, making it "the most successful score in history as well as the most performed score ever written for the Broadway stage."[63]
Several songs and scenes from the show address racial issues.[64] "Colored Spade", which introduces the character Hud, a militant black male, is a long list of racial slurs ("jungle bunny ... little black sambo") topped off with the declaration that Hud is the "president of the United States of love".[67] At the end of his song, he tells the tribe that the "boogie man" will get them, as the tribe pretends to be frightened.[66] "Dead End", sung by black tribe members, is a list of street signs that symbolize black frustration and alienation. One of the tribe's protest chants is "What do we think is really great? To bomb, lynch and segregate!"[66] "Black Boys/White Boys" is an exuberant acknowledgement of interracial sexual attraction;[68] the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down laws banning interracial marriage in 1967.[69] Another of the tribe's protest chants is "Black, white, yellow, red. Copulate in a king-sized bed."[66]
MacDermot has claimed that the songs "can't all be the same. You've got to get different styles. ... I like to think they're all a little different."[4] As such, the music in Hair runs the gamut of rock: from the rockabilly sensibilities of "Don't Put it Down" to the folk rock rhythms of "Frank Mills" and "What a Piece of Work is Man". "Easy to Be Hard" is pure rhythm and blues, and protest rock anthems abound: "Ain't Got No" and "The Flesh Failures". The acid rock of "Walking in Space" and "Aquarius" are balanced by the mainstream pop of "Good Morning Starshine".[108] Scott Miller ties the music of Hair to the hippies' political themes: "The hippies ... were determined to create art of the people and their chosen art form, rock/folk music was by its definition, populist. ... [T]he hippies' music was often very angry, its anger directed at those who would prostitute the Constitution, who would sell America out, who would betray what America stood for; in other words, directed at their parents and the government."[64] Theatre historian John Kenrick explains the application of rock music to the medium of the stage:
The music did not resonate with everyone. Leonard Bernstein remarked "the songs are just laundry lists"[110] and walked out of the production.[111] Richard Rodgers could only hear the beat and called it "one-third music".[110]John Fogerty said, "Hair is such a watered down version of what is really going on that I can't get behind it at all."[112] Gene Lees, writing for High Fidelity, stated that John Lennon found it "dull", and he wrote, "I do not know any musician who thinks it's good."[99]
The score had many more songs than were typical of Broadway shows of the day.[5] Most Broadway shows had about six to ten songs per act; Hair's total is in the thirties.[113] This list reflects the most common Broadway lineup.[114]
The 1993 London revival cast album contains new music that has been incorporated into the standard rental version.[64] A 1969 studio album, DisinHAIRited (RCA Victor LSO-1163), contains the following songs that had been written for the show but saw varying amounts of stage time. Some of the songs were cut between the Public and Broadway productions, some had been left off the original cast album due to space, and a few were never performed onstage.[114]
Acknowledging the show's critics, Scott Miller wrote in 2001 that "some people can't see past the appearance of chaos and randomness to the brilliant construction and sophisticated imagery underneath."[64] Miller notes, "Not only did many of the lyrics not rhyme, but many of the songs didn't really have endings, just a slowing down and stopping, so the audience didn't know when to applaud. ... The show rejected every convention of Broadway, of traditional theatre in general, and of the American musical in specific. And it was brilliant."[64]
A 20th anniversary concert event was held in May 1988 at the United Nations General Assembly to benefit children with AIDS.[179] The event was sponsored by First Lady Nancy Reagan with Barbara Walters giving the night's opening introduction.[180] Rado, Ragni and MacDermot reunited to write nine new songs for the concert. The cast of 163 actors included former stars from various productions around the globe: Moore, Vereen, Williams and Summer, as well as guest performers Bea Arthur, Frank Stallone and Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Ticket prices ranged from $250 to $5,000 and the proceeds went to the United States Committee for UNICEF and the Creo Society's Fund for Children with AIDS.[180]
A 1985 production of Hair mounted in Montreal was reportedly the 70th professional production of the musical.[34] In November 1988, Michael Butler produced Hair at Chicago's Vic Theater to celebrate the shows' 20th anniversary. The production was well received and ran until February 1989.[180] From 1990 to 1991, Pink Lace Productions ran a U.S. national tour of Hair that included stops in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky.[180] After Ragni died in 1991, MacDermot and Rado continued to write new songs for revivals through the 1990s. Hair Sarajevo, AD 1992 was staged during the siege of Sarajevo as an appeal for peace.[34] Rado directed a $1 million, 11 city national tour in 1994 that featured actor Luther Creek. With MacDermot returning to oversee the music, Rado's tour celebrated the show's 25th anniversary.[181] A small 1990 "bus and truck" production of Hair toured Europe for over 3 years,[181] and Rado directed various European productions from 1995 to 1999.[115]
Several songs were deleted, and the film's storyline departs significantly from the musical. The character of Claude is rewritten as an innocent draftee from Oklahoma, newly arrived in New York to join the military, and Sheila is a high-society debutante who catches his eye. In perhaps the greatest diversion, a mistake leads Berger to go to Vietnam in Claude's place, where he is killed.[245] While the film received generally positive reviews, Ragni and Rado said it failed to capture the essence of Hair by portraying hippies as "oddballs" without any connection to the peace movement.[244]
Songs from the musical have been featured in films and television episodes. For example, in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the character Willy Wonka welcomed the children with lyrics from "Good Morning Starshine".[249] "Aquarius" was performed in the final episode of Laverne and Shirley in 1983, where the character Carmine moves to New York City to become an actor, and auditions for Hair.[250] "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" was also performed in the final scene in the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin,[251] and Three Dog Night's recording of "Easy to Be Hard" was featured in the first part of David Fincher's film Zodiac.[252] On the Simpsons episode "The Springfield Files", the townspeople, Leonard Nimoy, Chewbacca, Dana Scully and Fox Mulder all sing "Good Morning Starshine".[253] The episode "Hairography" of the show Glee includes a much-criticized mash-up of the songs "Hair" and "Crazy in Love" by Beyoncé.[254] In addition, Head of the Class featured a two-part episode in 1990 where the head of the English department is determined to disrupt the school's performance of Hair.[255] The continued popularity of Hair is seen in its number ten ranking in a 2006 BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "[United Kingdom]'s Number One Essential Musicals".[256]
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