Today when I was browsing through sheet music covers, looking for blog fodder, I decided I'd see what was being published 100 years ago. That Kazzatsky Dance is an example - a strange one, but an example. With a little research I came up empty on "Kazzatsky" but drew a hit for "Kazatsky" on dictionary.com. It is defined as the plural of Kazachok which the site defines as "a lively, Slavic folk dance for a solo male dancer, marked esp. by the prisiadka." I'm guessing Irving's spelling (or that of the publisher) were responsible for the extra 'z' being added to the title - maybe they thought it needed two z's for extra zip. Who knows, I was happy to find an answer to the question "Kazz-what-sky?" The second question (after reading the definition) was, what the heck is a prisiadka? Well, believe it or not you've probably witnessed one - albeit in a cartoon. It's that weird (what American's define as) Russian dance that involves squatting and kicking your lets out. Our national memory has erased the Slavic association and replaced it with cossack hat-wearing ruskies. Mom always said too much time in front of the TV would rot my brain.
I also like the bubble picture of Neil McKinley. It looks like he's talking on a cell phone - an odd anachronism. Maybe he's a time traveler. Now either the entire universe has to unravel or I have to be eliminated by the Men in Black. I'm guessing Neil is a popular singer of the era but time has erased him from the records - at least the ones that can be googled.
Maybe this is an appropriate piece to choose with the Olympics underway. It has the same faux international flare that the games have. The name's all foreign but I'm guessing the tune was a shell of the music that normally accompanied the dance from which it stole its name. It probably was homogenized for American consumption and the sensibilities of the era in which it was published. We'll probably never know
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