Top Five Songs: Making Tracks

I got the studio cast recording for this show a while back, and while it’s certainly rough around the edges, it also has a lot going for it.  The story of Chinese and Japanese immigrants, entwining their families for several generations as it explores the history of Asian-Americans, is accompanied by some topnotch music.  These are the songs from it that I keep coming back to.

“Making Tracks” – Oh, I just love this song.  Whenever I’m listening to the album, I have to play the title track at least three times.  Such a beautiful depiction of the brutal lives of the Chinese railroad workers.  I love the soaring harmonies at the end of the second verse, and that chorus is just to die for.

Best line:  “We move the mighty mountain. / We build, we break our backs. / We live to lay the lines and / We live, making tracks.”

“Many Rivers” – This beautiful duet sees a pair of lovers separated by an ocean, with the husband working day in and day out to earn enough to bring his wife to him.  His words paint her a picture of the opportunities that will stretch out endlessly before them in America, while she reminds him not to forget all their old land brought to them.  Their echoes to one another in the chorus are so lovely.

Best line:  “I see that land there in my mind, / But love, the land you left behind, / It gave you life, a language, and a bride.”

“Picture Perfect” – It was a few of the cast members on the recording that led me to this show, the first of which we see here.  Lea Salonga does a beautiful job with this song about a Japanese picture bride traveling to America to meet her husband.  The lyrics are tentative and uncertain, but there’s still a bravery that echoes through them that I really love.

Best line:  “Take a photograph, / A negative, / An image on a plate. / Print a positive / On paper and / The image they create / Is America: / An open book, / A story I can write / Where the negatives / Turn positive / And I turn to the light.”

“So Now I See You” – Lea Salonga and Michael K. Lee – honestly, with voices like theirs, it’s just gravy that the song itself is so good.  It’s an unusual sort of love song, one that recognizes the arranged marriage that began it, along with the hard days and years that will follow.  And yet, through it all is this undercurrent of unity, a promise to stay by one another’s side no matter the hardship.  There’s something really lovely about that.

Best line:  “We’re a husband and a wife, / And that picture perfect life may never be, / But still I see you standing here with me.”

“The Lucky One” – I absolutely love this song.  It’s the contemplations of a Japanese-American man who’s just returned home after fighting in WWII, wrestling with the perverseness of a country that locked up his family as “enemies” on the grounds of their ethnicities, and yet still called on him to serve, depending on his patriotism.  A beautifully-conflicted number by a character who’s not sure if he’s angrier at the country that did this to him or himself for acquiescing to it.

Best line:  “And if we were the enemy, / Who was I in Italy? / And if I looked like one of ‘them,’ / Then who, / Who are they?”