I AM GOING TO SING A SONG BY....

by Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines

© M. E. Raines, 2015

Quickly: name an opera composer who is alive today!

Can’t think of one? Even if you have never listened to opera, chances are you know the names of at least a few of the great opera composers of the past, like Mozart, Wagner, Handel, and Verdi.

Sadly, they wouldn’t have a chance in today’s world.

On a recent broadcast of a television show called Dancing with the Stars, singer Chaka Khan was asked by an interviewer which song she had chosen for her dance. She said that she would be dancing to “Chicago by Frank Sinatra.”

Chicago was not by Frank Sinatra. He was only one of the people who sang and recorded it, and he did so decades after it was written by a composer whose name was Fred Fisher. Ever heard of Fred Fisher? No, of course not! Perhaps Kahn can be excused; as a performer herself, it is only natural that she would want to give credit to another performer.

Our society glamorizes performers and scorns composers so much, however, that in the USA, stating that a song is by a musician rather than by the actual  composer has become a habit in just a few years. It is a cruel one. Even on older TV shows like American Idol, (which should have known better, but probably was largely responsible for popularizing this travesty), singers routinely say that the music they will be singing is “by” an individual who had performed the music at an earlier time.

It is both sad and insulting that composers and lyricists are seldom mentioned and even more rarely given credit for their compositions; the only exceptions occur when the performer is also the composer. It takes incredible talent to compose an enduring piece of music. Mozart and Beethoven would go unrecognized in contemporary society, and Burt Bacharach or the astonishing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein would be complete unknowns.

The  performer is glorified. The person with the huger talent—that individual who composed the piece—is left out of the loop and forced to fade into anonymity. And the real loser? Music. Who will write brilliant music when it’s a sure bet that nobody will ever even know your name, much less give you credit?