Prokofiev Aquacise Music?

     Must aquacise music be booming, thumping, electronic dreck?

     Why not Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf?"  Why not Handel's "Water Music?"

     I thought of this the other afternoon in the local public swimming pool complex's hot tub.
My water was steamy wonderful, but the aquacise class in the nearby pool was splashing to
"music to weld by," "fascist disco music," as I have called such ear abuse before.

     Even Australian Mrs. Thompson in her tight red track suit wouldn't bop to that beat.  My Grade 3 teacher played for us Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf," the version in which the conductor explains various instruments standing for various characters.   The oboe stood for the duck, I recall.

     Aquacisers could listen to that, splash their way to fitness, and go home humming a great tune.  Instead, a 20-something scrawn commands over the loudspeaker, which sadly has enough room for dance music from hell, too.  I'm not surprised that the ranted at, musically-mugged women left the pool with a shuffle, not a lilt, in their steps.  You can't lilt to that music, in water or on land.

    By contrast, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" or Handel's "Water Music" might make people enjoy aquacises.  They might skip home, and hop eagerly to the next aquacise class:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kuw8YjSbKd4

That's Handel above.  Makes you wanna twinkle your toes, eh?

     While I'm on about music, Frederich Nietzsche's art form best able to narrate the human spirit, I'll mention Wynton Marsalis and Willie Nelson on the recycling dumpster behind the public library.  "How did I get here?"  they might ask, as the Talkings Heads did in a song, a song better for aquacises than what I heard this week.   The duo are safe, even if Nelson is dead; but their compact disk was atop the recycle dumpster, I noticed when I dropped in my own recycling.

    I borrowed and returned this disk months ago:  "Two Men with the Blues."   The library people said it did not rejoin the collection, but I convinced them that I returned it.  They never found it, but they believed me and did not make me pay for it.

     Imagine my surprise when I found this disk on the recycle dumpster.  The library shares a building with the regional district government offices.  Someone threw out this disk.  It seems I did get the disk back into the building, whose tenants later discarded it.

     The library clerk was happy to have it back.  "Did you find the case, too?  Now we can re-order."
It was miracle enough to find the disk, albeit too scratched to play again.  Perhaps she was trying to be funny.  Perhaps she just came from aquacises, and was therefore unable to be funny, let alone musical.

     Handel's link is above.  Have Prokofiev and the Talking Heads below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydOO91xQBH4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7pVjl4Rrtc

     When next you swim, think of oboes, ducks, Prokofiev, Handel, and anything but typical, terrible aquacise music.  Booma booma in a pig's eye.