What a wonderful world

When I was at French camp (where you go to learn French…in the middle of the American woods), somehow impressions of Louis Armstrong got to be very popular. I’m not really sure why, because you’d think with all the French around us we’d get Edith Piaf impressions or something, but such is the nature of the world: bizarre.

Anyway, impressions of Louis Armstrong were all around us: Louis Armstrong would respond in French to a teacher’s question, Louis Armstrong would sing French camp songs in his signature voice, Louis Armstrong would wish her fellow bunkmates a good night, and Louis Armstrong would share (in French) some of the things he liked about the day during a nightly campfire. Most of us didn’t take our admiration of Louis Armstrong’s voice to this level, and instead settled on singing “What a Wonderful World” in his voice as we wandered from activity to activity. Certain people became known as really good imitators of Louis Armstrong, and we all looked to them for inspiration.

Towards the end of camp came “International Day,” where all the different language camps got together at the German camp and interacted. And the English camp, mostly filled with immigrant youth, had prepared a song to present to all the other camps.

“What a Wonderful World”

They sang this song with their normal voices. After the first verse, they invited the other campers to all sing together. So all 100 of my fellow French campers stood up, and without any prior coordination all sang in that unique, scratchy voice of his at the top of our lungs. Over 100 Louis Armstrongs.

The language camps around us heard our distinctive scratchiness and immediately switched their voices to join us, until most of the hundreds of native-born Americans in the vicinity were singing like Louis Armstrong, while meanwhile the immigrants kept singing in their normal voices and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

After the ceremony, a bunch of us went to talk to the immigrant campers and compliment them on their song and on their English. And they all asked why we were singing so funny. We laughed and explained about Louis Armstrong (“Who?” they asked), and it was revealed that they had never heard the song before. It was simply taught to them, and they didn’t even understand what they were singing about. We were initially shocked—how could you not have heard the song “What a Wonderful World” before??? Anyway, we tried to explain that he had a distinctive voice, but they didn’t understand the word distinctive….finally a girl says, “Oh…he has funny voice?” Well, yes, but…. In the end we all decided that the immigrants were “cute” and we went on to go do something else.

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Well, now I’m the immigrant. Now I’m the one singing songs without background knowledge, and I’m the one people are calling “cute.” At the army gibush this past week, the girls in my group constantly called me “cute.” These Israeli girls (all of them younger than me, mind you) decided that my Hebrew was cute, my accent was cute, and my American attitude and way of thinking were cute.

Anyway, I was just thinking about all of this because today, in preparation for Memorial Day here, we spent most of class listening to famous sad Israeli songs. There were moments where the teacher turned down the volume and then instructed us all to sing along. And as I sat there, my mind immediately went back to “International Day” those years ago. Here I was, just like those American immigrants from Mexico or France or the Middle East or whatever from years back, singing a song that everyone else in the country probably knew very well from Memorial Days past, but which I had never encountered before. And on top of that I had no idea what the hell I was singing about.

The teacher went on to explain on the different memories and whatever that she associates with these songs, being the Israeli that she is. I thought of the song “What a Wonderful World,” and how the song makes me think of the big earthquake in LA from when I was 5, and of riding in the backseat of my grandpa’s car (he was taking me and me brothers to stay with him and our grandma since we didn’t have any water) while that song played on the radio and the window was down and blowing frigid air into my face, and I remember looking out the window of the car and seeing all the destruction that the earthquake had caused. Memories of natural disasters aside though, the song makes me think of old people (usually my grandparents), because this song comes on a lot on oldies stations. And also I think of people doing Louis Armstrong impressions. But when immigrants to the US sing it, or when I sing famous Israeli songs, we’re just singing songs we learned in class.