Aldeburgh Festival and a Mexican General with Four Left Legs

Jan and I have just paid a brief visit to Aldeburgh during the annual festival. We were there to see a choral group, the East Suffolk Skylarks, of which my sister Tricia is a member, give their first public performance. The notable thing about this group is that all the members are people with Parkinson’s or their friends and family members. I had associated Parkinson’s only with trembling limbs, but I discovered that we should understand that it affects muscle control in many ways, including the voice and breathing control. Parkinson’s does not make singing easy.

We watched the group warm up and rehearse at one of the studios at Snape Maltings, a few miles inland from Alderbugh, where the high-profile concerts featuring world-class musicians take place. After a session of warm-up exercises, the Skylarks ran through their programme of sea shanties. Their enthusiasm, commitment to one another, and joyous sound was truly inspiring. There is a family connection with Snape. The maltings were a regular destination for our maternal grandfather, Harry Lucas, captain of a saling barge. Harry must have experienced many a North Sea day of strong wind and rain like the day of the performance. Since some of the Skylarks are quite frail, the organizers were concerned about the weather, and proposed the possibility of performing in the warmth of the maltings instead. But the Skylarks had come to perform in public for the first time and were determined that weather would not stop them.

To reach the bandstand, the performers had to negotiate the steps over the concrete sea wall, walk along a plastic ‘red carpet’ to the stand, and then up more steps. Some of the 23 performers were able to stand to perform, others remained seated. The keyboard player held her sheet music down with the aid of plentiful clothes pegs and a festival volunteer’s hands to prevent the music blowing along the beach. Then an audience of some hundred people heard the glorious sound of jolly sea shanties over the raging wind. The performance was a triumph and the Skylarks’ smiles showed that they knew it.

 The bandstand on the beach at Aldeburgh

Those of you who know my enthusiasm for Mexican history, will doubt that one can link sea shanties performed on a North Sea beach to Mexico. However, one of the songs performed was a shanty variously known as Santianna, Santy Anna, Santayana and so on. The rather improbable subject of this song is General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, known as Santa Anna for brevity. Santa Anna was the prototypical 19^th-century Mexican caudillo (military leader), who led several pronunciamientos (coups d’état). He was president of Mexico several times. Americans know him best as the Mexican general who in 1838 besieged Anglo-secessionists in the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, where Davy Crockett died. Shortly afterwards Santa Anna was defeated by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto, and Texas became an independent republic, before joining the USA in 1845.

Santa Anna was rather good at losing Mexican territory. He was president at the time of the campaign that Americans know as the Mexican-American War, and Mexicans as the Unjust North American Invasion (1846-1848). Mexican defeat resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ceded to the USA present-day California, Arizona and New Mexico. Santa Anna’s career was definitively ended by the Revolution of Ayutla of 1854-1855.

Curiously enough, Santa Anna, had about as many left legs as he had presidential terms. He first lost his left leg to French cannon fire in the Pastry War of 1838, prompted by a complaint from a French Pastry chef who claimed compensation for damage to his shop in Mexico City. Santa Anna had his leg buried with full military honours in a tomb in Mexico City. His next leg was made of cork, was captured by American troops during the Unjust North American Invasion, and is now on display in the Illinois State Military Museum. His next leg is now in the home of former Illinois governor Richard J Oglesby. It was captured in the same war. Thus, Santa Anna required a fourth leg. His original leg had already come to a tumultuous end when he was deposed from the presidency in 1844. Rebellious Mexicans raided the leg’s tomb and dragged it through the streets.

The original author of the sea shanty knew enough about Mexico to glorify Santa Anna’s military exploits, but, unfortunately, the song is dramatically a-historical. The lyrics inform us that:

He gain’d the day at Molly-del-Rey

Away Santianna

An’ General Taylor ran away

All across the plains of Mexico

Alas for Mexico, far from winning the day Mexican forces were soundly defeated at Molino del Rey, to the south of Mexico City, and Santa Anna never had the pleasure of chasing General Zachary Taylor across any plains. Rather, Taylor led the invasion and defeated the Mexican army repeatedly. Still, it is a very jolly song. And, when performed with gusto by the Skylarks, one quite forgot the North Sea wind.