Shannon Costello

Summertime and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Daddy’s rich, and your mamma’s good lookin’

So hush little baby, don’t you cry…

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know and like this song but it turns out I really never understood it.  On a hike in Yellowstone one summer we came upon a lake surrounded by wildflowers.  For some reason fish were jumping constantly all over the lake.  Of course I was singing Summertime after that.

We went to the Kennedy Center last weekend to see Porgy and Bess. (Senator Lieberman was there, too- he is actually a real person!)  I went with only the vaguest idea of the story.  Summertime is a lullaby that Clara sings to her baby.  But Clara lives on Catfish Row, an African-American community where everyone is poor, so poor that when Robbins dies they have to take up a collection to afford to bury him or the authorities (who are white) will give the body to the medical students.  Clara’s husband, Jake, owns a small fishing boat.  He is obviously far from rich.

Later, Bess sings the song to the baby.  But by this time, Clara is dead- drowned during an unsuccessful attempt to rescue Jake.  I guess it is still summertime, but the living is far from easy and the baby’s parents are dead.  Bess herself won’t even be with the baby long and he will be passed on to yet another member of the community.

Talk about the tragedy of irony…