Dear Citizens of Gromboolia, welcome to the long-awaited seventh installation of the Recent Quackisitions, now with bonus quack! When last we met, I was a good deal wiser and an ell and an aitch taller. But that was in another country, and besides, the inch is dead. Secretly, however, I have been twiddling away at the Anthology, and here I shall highlight the usual triumvirate of word, vision, and sound.
As for word, please give it up for Fosco Maraini (1912-2004). Maraini was an Italian photographer and anthropologist, but for our purposes here, a theoretician of nonsense. He proposed “metasemantic poetry,” where nonsense words that sound like real words are used with a kind of syntactic correctness, while sticking to the usual semantic confusion, polysemy, and polyandry. In other words, he used non-words like words, to sound like words, to make you like words. Here is his most famous piece, “Il Ionfo,” from his collection “Gnòsi delle fànfole” (1978), with a parallel translation by Matilde Coloarossi. Part of the pudding here is the performance, and so here it is, performed by Gigi Proietti.
For our musical selection, I give you the December 4, 2020 installation of “Crap from the Past,” special nonsense edition [click here]. This is a production of Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber and is heard on 90.3 KFAI-FM, Minneapolis, and KFAI.org. Included are 27 tracks that focus on gibberish lyrics, with some old favorites (5, count ’em, 5 versions of “Mah na mah na”) and some that you didn’t know you knew, like the Banana Splitz theme, “Hubba hubba zoot zoot.” Because these are often simply gibberish or fake languages, they might not quite fit the stricter definitions of nonsense (forgive me, Wim), but they’re better than being attacked with a pointed stick.
Remember, let your wild prisencolinensinainciusol flag fly! Check out more in: THE GROMBOOLIA ANTHOLOGY OF NONSENSE