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Somewhere Over the Rainbow

 This song is a fantasy of escape--fleeing from trouble.


When all the clouds darken up the skyway--
There's a rainbow highway to be found...
Leading from your windowpane...
Just a step beyond the rain...

The speaker describes the destination, a place of creative freedom ("where the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true")....It's standard to note that Yip Harburg's parents fled Russia for the Lower East Side of NY; possibly, this was a response to the threat of pogroms. Harburg's father found inspiration in the works of Shaw, who taught that "humor is an act of courage and dissent."

Somewhere, over the rainbow....
Skies are blue....

Harburg saves his fireworks for the final lines. This isn't really a song about a rainbow. It's a song about a bluebird:

Somewhere, over the rainbow...
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow--
Why, then, oh why, can't I?

Broadway is crowded with young women who study birds. Barbra says, "Birds roosting in the tree...pick up and go. And the going proves...That's how it ought to be; I pick up, too, when the spirit moves me." Harolyn Blackwell is amazed that caged birds still make melodies: "Teach me how to sing. If I cannot fly? Let me sing...." Mary Martin wonders if her heart could "beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees."

Harburg's speaker asks to *become* a bird. If flight is possible, then why isn't it possible for me?

Ten or twelve lines; spare, simple language. But it would be difficult to "mute" this speaker, or push her out of your head.

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