I was fully aware at age five that, even though mine were much smaller than my older sister Gloria’s, I possessed the same right thumb and third finger that she did. But my two fingers were mere dumb digits, while hers could combine to create absolute musical magic.
I am referring to the first time my sister snapped her fingers in my face. The clicking sound she had just conjured up out of thin air astonished and delighted me. I just HAD to do that, too. But no matter how many times I tried to duplicate that snapping, all I achieved was frustrating silence and, eventually, a tiny blister on the inside of my right thumb. Rats.
It must have been a year or so later when a friend, much more patient than my grumbly sister, showed me how to do it. When I gleefully demonstrated my newly acquired dexterity to Gloria, she immediately wiggled her ears at me with incredible vigor. “Betcha can’t do that, Pipsqueak.” Oh, how I tried; oh, how I couldn’t. Rats again.
I never did acquire wiggly ears that would have made me a hit at pre-teen social gatherings. But it mattered not to me, since I recognized early on that such a talent was a mere party trick, while finger-snapping ushered me into the Realm Of Cool. I was thirteen when I first saw the movie West Side Story, and when the Jets demonstrated their intimidation of the Sharks with their bold, rhythmic finger snapping, I was quietly snapping right along with them under my movie seat.
During that same year, 1959, I first heard the finger-clicking hip of Peggy Lee’s sultry song Fever. Five years later, there came another wonderful finger-snapping jive vibe, The Temptations’ My Girl.
And cool, campy nirvana was achieved once again in 1964, with the snappy, syncopated silliness of The Addams Family:
They’re creepy and they’re kooky
Mysterious and spooky.
They’re altogether ooky
The Addams family.
There’s something so sophisticated about musicians and dancers snapping their fingers to keep time or add a cool percussion sound to a song. Be it the camp of The Addams Family or the seduction of Fever, when I learned to snap my fingers in first grade I was given a lifetime pass into instantly sounding hip, man.
Even so, I was quite unprepared for a brand new finger-snapping chic in the mid-1980’s. I was the faculty advisor of the English Club at my university. The club consisted of enthusiastic undergrad English majors who met once a month to plan literary activities with like-minded students. Imagine my shock at our first meeting when two students were very hot to organize a “Poetry Slam.” A what? I hadn’t even heard of such an event.
It turned out that a Chicago poet had recently decided that the poetry scene was too structured and stuffy, and had invented competitive open-microphone poetry readings called “slams.” Set in front of live audiences with a panel of judges to crown a winner, they were decades ahead of the American Idol model. Audience members were encouraged to provide finger snapping during the poets’ recitation as a spontaneous way to agree with a powerful line of verse and show solidarity with a particular contestant. Applause was considered far too loud and vulgar for the sensitive poets; the finger snap was the perfect supportive solution.
Our first slam was held a month later. Club member enthusiasm, great flier publicity, and my effective arm-twisting of anyone who ever owed me any kind of favor, guaranteed a respectable audience of forty. Ten poets from the campus and the surrounding town bravely signed up to compete. I explained the rules to the audience. Even the finger-snapping eventually caught on with them, and the reaffirming snapping became quite cool.
The unforgettable moment of the night, notably in late October, was provided by one of the poets from town. When this poet, who had signed up under the single name of “Salem,” made her way up to the microphone, there was a stifled gasp. Garbed completely in black, from coal beret to knee-high spit-polished black boots and sable cape, she launched into a gory graveyard ditty which she had titled “Decomposition Class.” I am sure we had all heard visceral poems before, but nothing like this one, which concentrated on decaying body parts.
The audience was shocked into silence, and so, as faculty advisor, I felt it my duty to support her by clicking in with a finger snap or two. But it was all I could do to stop myself from bursting into giggles when I realized the rhythm of my snapping was perfectly syncopated to “She’s creepy and she’s kooky, mysterious and spooky.”
Afterwards, I just didn’t have the heart to ask Salem what her family name was.
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here