[Dixielandjazz] Betty Boop in India

[Stephen G Barbone]

On Feb 15, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Bill Haesler wrote:
> Stephen G Barbone wrote:
>> I've added a youtube link to part of "Sita Sings The Blues". It is  
>> a stylized Indian (Hindu) version of Betty Boop singing a neat  
>> version of: "Who's That Knockin At My Door"
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BVg1WzS5Co&feature=related
>
> Dear Steve,
> No you didn't.
> You downloaded a wonderful animated sequence using an Annette  
> Hanshaw recording from 8 Sept 1927 featuring Eddie Lang, Adrian  
> Rollini, Joe Venuti, and Vic Berton.
> Betty Boop's cartoon voice was ghosted by Mae Questel and based in  
> many ways to that other great 'Roaring 20s' film and singing star  
> Helen Kane and the other film favourite Clara Bow.
> Now Steve, if you'd paid more attention to Classic Jazz 101 back in  
> your formative days during the jazzy 50s........ [sigh].
> Wot would youse do without us discographers?
> Very kind regards,
> Bill.
> PS: The associated 'Sita' YouTube clips are equally interesting,  
> also with Annette Hanshaw vocals.
> “Sita Sings the Blues” looks to be a great documentary.
> I hope we get to see it here very soon.


Dear Bill:

Details, details, details. I knew it was a classic jazz record, but as  
you surmise, had no idea who it was, other than Annette. Henshaw on  
the vocal. Glad you dug up the original singer and band. I didn't  
really mean it was Betty Boop ghosted by Mae Questal, but rather a  
"stylized Indian version of Betty Boop", as an incarnation of Sita.  
<grin>

As you say it looks like a neat documentary. Here is the entire  
article about it. Note the paragraphs about licensing the music, and  
the paragraph that credits Ms. Henshaw as the vocalist.

BTW, I have played "Who's that Knockin At My Door" many times over the  
past 20 years. It is a wonderful tune.

Cheers,
Steve

February 15, 2009 - NY TIMES 0 by Margy Rochlin


Hindu Goddess as Betty Boop? It’s Personal

OAKLAND, Calif.
WHAT do a 3,000-year-old Sanskrit epic, a ’20s-era jazz singer and  
Indonesian shadow puppets have in common? They’re all part of the  
eclectic cultural tapestry that is “Sita Sings the Blues,” an 82- 
minute animated feature that combines autobiography with a retelling  
of the classic Indian myth the Ramayana, and that required its  
creator, the syndicated comic-strip artist Nina Paley, to spend three  
years transforming herself into a one-woman moving-picture studio.
“At some point everything went through my computer,” said Ms. Paley,  
who is self-taught and whose longest animated film before this — of a  
dog chasing a ball — clocked in at just over four minutes. Her  
decision to do it herself may have satisfied her creative urges, but  
it also put her more than $20,000 in debt. “That’s why not everyone  
does it,” she said.

It’s hard to imagine how Ms. Paley, 40, could have farmed out the  
writing, directing, editing, producing and animating of “Sita Sings  
the Blues.” As engaging as the film is, explaining it is tricky: along  
with traditional 2-D animation there are cutouts, collages,  
photographs and scenes with hand-painted watercolors as the backdrop.  
At certain points Ms. Paley mixes laughs with exposition by having  
three flat silhouette characters dispute the details of the Ramayana’s  
tragic saga of the Hindu goddess Sita, who is exiled by her husband,  
Rama, who fears she has been unfaithful after she is abducted by a  
demon king.

At other points Ms. Paley weaves in the story of her own collapsing  
marriage, and the time switches from ancient India to present-day San  
Francisco and Manhattan, the images hand-drawn and jittery. In between  
everything else are flash-animation musical numbers featuring Sita in  
voluptuous Betty Boop-like form — almond-shaped head, saucer eyes and  
swaying hips — accompanied by the warbling voice of a real-life  
flapper-era singer named Annette Hanshaw.

For fans of “Sita Sings the Blues” Ms. Paley’s imaginative leaps and  
blend of styles are part and parcel of the film’s visual and aural  
originality. “You can actually feel how much time went into it,” said  
Alison Dickey, a film producer and one of the jurors who nominated Ms.  
Paley for Film Independent’s Someone to Watch honor, to be announced  
at the Spirit Awards next Saturday. “We see so many films, and when  
you come across one like this, you just feel like you’ve stumbled upon  
a gem.”


In 2002 Ms. Paley followed her husband, an animator, from their home  
in San Francisco to a town in western India. It was there that she  
first learned of the tale of the Ramayana. When she reached the part  
when Sita kills herself to prove her fidelity, she said, she thought,  
“That’s just messed up and wrong.”

An idea for a postfeminist comic strip began brewing. In it her new  
ending would still have Rama rejecting Sita, but instead of committing  
suicide she would become empowered. “She says, ‘To hell with you. I’m  
going to go join a farming collective.’ ”

Before Ms. Paley could commit her I-will-survive strip to paper,  
though, life intervened. While she was on a business trip to New York,  
her husband sent her an e-mail message telling her not to return. In a  
state of “grief, agony and shock,” she remained in Manhattan, camping  
out on friends’ sofas.

One of her hosts, a collector of vintage records, played Annette  
Hanshaw’s shiny rendition of Fred E. Ahlert and Roy Turk’s bluesy  
lament “Mean to Me.” “A friend of mine joked, ‘That’s your theme  
song,’ ” Ms. Paley said. And while “Mean to Me” and Rama’s rejection  
of Sita made sense together, she didn’t have the money or the  
emotional energy to envision more than a short film.

That film, “Trial by Fire,” was so successful on the festival circuit  
that Ms. Paley kept expanding the project, using successive chapters  
of the Ramayana and Ms. Hanshaw’s songs as Sita’s sung narrative. “It  
sounds dumb, but the movie wanted to be made,” she said. “There was  
this music and this story. It was like: ‘Someone’s got to make this  
movie. I guess it’s going to be me.’ ”

When Ms. Paley recounted this, it was back in November and she was  
sitting in the dining room of a friend’s house in Oakland. That  
evening “Sita Sings the Blues” would open the San Francisco  
International Animation Festival. (It also opened the Museum of Modern  
Art’s annual series Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You in New  
York that month and went on to win a Gotham Award.)

After the final credits rolled, the gangly, curly-haired Ms. Paley  
bounded onstage and announced, “You’ve all just participated in an  
illegal act.’ ” Though Ms. Hanshaw’s recordings are not protected by  
federal copyright, those who own the rights to the songs themselves  
charge tens of thousands of dollars that Ms. Paley does not have to  
use them — which is also more than independent distributors have  
offered for a theatrical release.

Because of an exception in the copyright act, public television  
stations can broadcast music without having to clear individual  
licenses, and “Sita” will be shown on the New York PBS station WNET on  
March 7, after which it will be available on the station’s Web site.  
“My thing,” Ms. Paley said in November, sounding glum, “is that I just  
want people to see it.”

Recently, though, the licensing fee was negotiated down to  
approximately $50,000, and “Sita” is close to being sprung from what  
Ms. Paley calls “copyright jail.” Still, she hopes to release it in a  
manner as alternative as her film. Using the free software movement —  
dedicated to spreading information without copyright restrictions — as  
her model, she has decided to offer “Sita” at no charge online and let  
the public become her distributor. After all, it’s a movie that even  
one of the least sympathetic characters — her ex-husband — might  
endorse.

“He was relieved,” Ms. Paley reported. “He told a friend of mine he  
thought it was tactfully done.”


On Feb 15, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Bill Haesler wrote:

> Stephen G Barbone wrote:
>> I've added a youtube link to part of "Sita Sings The Blues". It is  
>> a stylized Indian (Hindu) version of Betty Boop singing a neat  
>> version of: "Who's That Knockin At My Door"
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BVg1WzS5Co&feature=related
>
> Dear Steve,
> No you didn't.
> You downloaded a wonderful animated sequence using an Annette  
> Hanshaw recording from 8 Sept 1927 featuring Eddie Lang, Adrian  
> Rollini, Joe Venuti, and Vic Berton.
> Betty Boop's cartoon voice was ghosted by Mae Questel and based in  
> many ways to that other great 'Roaring 20s' film and singing star  
> Helen Kane and the other film favourite Clara Bow.
> Now Steve, if you'd paid more attention to Classic Jazz 101 back in  
> your formative days during the jazzy 50s........ [sigh].
> Wot would youse do without us discographers?
> Very kind regards,
> Bill.
> PS: The associated 'Sita' YouTube clips are equally interesting,  
> also with Annette Hanshaw vocals.
> “Sita Sings the Blues” looks to be a great documentary.
> I hope we get to see it here very soon.
>