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Monday, August 16, 2004
Bess
Bess, we two is one / Now an' forever.
Bess, You Is My Woman Now
Music: George Gershwin
Lyrics :Du Bose Heyward / Ira Gershwin
{ the best version ever by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong at Porgy and Bess - Verve Records; you can find other great versions, as the unusual tone in Baaba Maal's at Red Hot Rhapsody cd and Marisa Monte's version featuring the vocal group Nouvelle Cuisine at her first cd, Marisa Monte}
Porgy:
Bess, you is my woman now,
you is, you is!
An' you mus' laugh an' sing an' dance
for two instead of one.
Want no wrinkle on yo' brow,
Nohow,
Because de sorrow of de past is all done done
Oh, Bess, my Bess!
Bess:
Porgy, I's yo' woman now,
I is, I is!
An' I ain't never goin' nowhere 'less you shares de fun.
Dere's no wrinkle on my brow,
Nohow,
But I ain't goin'! You hear me sayin',
If you ain' goin', wid you I'm stayin'!
Porgy, I's yo' woman now!
I's yours forever -
Mornin' time an' evenin' time an'
summer time an' winter time.
Porgy:
Mornin' time an' evenin' time an'
summer time an' winter time.
Bess, you got yo' man.
Bess, you is my woman now and forever.*
Dis life is jes' begun,
Bess, we two is one
Now an' forever.
Oh, bess, don't min' dose women.
You got yo' Porgy.
I knows you means it,
I seen it in yo' eyes, Bess.
We'll go swingin'
Through de years a-singin'.
Bess:
Mornin' time an' evenin' time an'
summer time an' winter time.
Porgy:
Mornin' time an' evenin' time an'
summer time an' winter time.
Bess:
Oh, my Porgy, my man, Porgy.
Porgy: [simultaneously] My bess, my Bess.
Bess: From dis minute I'm tellin' you, I keep dis vow: Porgy, I's yo'
woman now.
Porgy: [simultaneously]
From dis minute I'm tellin' you, I keep dis vow:
Oh, my Bessie, we's happy now. We is one now.
*Sung as Bess repeats her part from 'Porgy, I's yo' woman now...'
through 'I's yours forever -'
<<>>
P.S. : Porgy and Bess is an Opera for Negro players wrote by George Gershwin. He continually refused every attempt for staging the play using white actors on blackface, common habit by the time the opera was written. Although most negros didn't like the play at all, for it used many stereotypes (remember it was written by Du Bose Heyward), Gershwin tried to prize the negro music, and developed an one of a kind opera, combining so many different music styles it reminded the Broadway shows.
Gershwin himself said in the New York Times in 1935: Because Porgy and Bess deals with Negro Life in America it brings to the operatic form elements that have never before appeared in the opera and I have adapted my method to utilize the drama, the humor, the superstition, the religious fervor, the dancing and the irrepressible high spirits of the race. If doing this, I have created a new form, which combines opera with theater, this new form has come quite naturally out of the material.
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