Tuesday 18 December 2012

Revelation

It took several weeks of rehearsals, and some superhuman effort not to spill the beans.

But my daughter, who normally reveals any secret she’s told in world-record time, kept schtum about the big surprise in her class’s song in the Christmas Show.

And lo, it came to pass, that her and her five classmates lined up with pieces of paper spelling out C.H.R.I.S.T.M.A.S. and launched into an excruciating lesson in rhyming from Sir Clifford of Richardmus.

It was Cliff’s Christmas Alphabet song, which I had been warned about. It starts: ‘C is for the candy trimmed around the Christmas tree, H is for the happiness with all the fam-i-lee’ and goes downhill from there. But, you know how it is -  even a Cliff-denier like me will put up with top of the pap songs when they’re performed by a bunch of children with with huge grins on their faces, especially when one of them belongs to me.

As the verses continued, their smiles got wider. The big ‘reveal’ was coming. Mid-song, the music suddenly changed, the volume was pumped up high, that familiar driving drumbeat echoed around the hall, crunchy synths kicked in, and it all went Gangnam Style.

The audience let out a huge, actual ROAR of delight. The teenage troupe’s festive version of Korean rapper Psy’s huge, hit song saw them subsitute “Ooh, sexy lay-dee” with “Yeah, Merry Christ-mas”, and of course let out a triumphant shouts of “Wuppa SANTA STYLE!”.

My daughter and each of her classmates wigged out good and proper, doing those ridiculous and irresistable “I’m disco-dancing and riding a horse” moves.

The song, I realise now, must have been used up and down the land this Christmas, in shows and pantos. 

But last night, none of us saw it coming. And it was a blast of sheer delight.


Video is Psy - Gangnam Style (live). I'll admit the roar from the crowd in the special school hall yesterday wasn't quite as loud as this concert in Seoul.

Related post: Cliffhanger

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