Narrative Songs and Story Songs

So I was listening to a fascinating episode of Aussie podcast Thrash 'n' Treasure and a discussion about The Book of Mormon. One of the presenters liked this musical and offered up his reasoning:

"It [The Book of Mormon] tells the full narrative within the lyrics. Most musicals, so far, that I've listened to will ramble along and the character will go about how he's sad about something. And they'll sing for four and half minutes about being sad. And four and half minutes later, all that's progressed is the fact that he's sad. Nothing's moved forward. They've just sung about a moment in time and shoved a play in between. Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] have managed to advance the story with every song and within the songs, rather than just have a play broken up by music."

I think I know what he means. But I also think that it's a common misconception about musicals.

Yes, musical theatre songs often contain narrative. That is, they give you the plot points in song. And that's true for some of The Book of Mormon songs. "Two by Two" shows us how the newly-minted Mormons are getting assigned to their various missions all over the world. "Baptise Me" shows us Nabalungi getting "baptised" by Elder Cunningham, albeit in a Fifty Shades kind of a way.

Songs can also be interspersed with dialogue and scenes. The narrative continues, not so much within the song, but around it. So, when Elder Price tries to gee himself up in order to convert the local Ugandan warlord, he does so by singing a little gospel number to himself, "I Believe". Halfway through the song, the scene changes. He enters the warlord's camp and picks up the song again in a cheery singalong with the gun-toting chief.

So theatre songs often have this narrative element. However - and here's the point, so I may just write it in caps - THEY DON'T HAVE TO. 

That's because musicals aren't really 'narrative through song'; they are 'drama through song', and drama is more than narrative. It's also character, tone, theme and all those other things that your tweedy English teacher droned on about at school. 

So, for a song to be dramatically integrated, it doesn't necessarily have to drive the plot. Take the opening number from The Book of Mormon, "Hello". That doesn't do much narrative apart from introducing a few names. It does, however, set the tone of the show. The same goes for "I am Africa" where a bunch of fey white boys express their new-found love of the Dark Continent. It doesn't really advance the plot. It's more an exposition of the musical's thematic concern for inter-cultural exchange ("Africans are Africans, but we are Africa!").

Any which way, it's pretty funny.

So, in musicals, there are some songs that advance the narrative and some songs that don't but advance the story in other ways.

Still, a fair dinkum discussion about a beaut of a show. Well worth a listen.