Brekekekex

Singing with the Frogs

Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax is the most famous animal sound from ancient Greece, the sound of a frog croaking. It is recognisably the croak of a species of frog rana ridibunda.

The comic play ‘Frogs’ by Aristophanes, staged in January 405 BC, tells how the god of theatre Dionysus is desperate for a good tragedy. But the great tragedians, Aeschylus and Euripides, are dead, and those who are left are in his view second-rate. So he decides to go down to the Underworld to retrieve one of them.

Getting to the Underworld means rowing across the lake of the Styx in the boat of the infernal ferryman Charon. As Dionysus embarks on the trip, his steady rowing rhythm is disturbed by a chorus of cheeky frogs (dead frogs, that is, now residing near the lake). The faster rhythm of their croak is forcing him to row faster than is comfortable - it’s giving him, he says, “blisters on my bum”!

In the ancient theatre, the chorus of 24 singer-dancers dressed in frog costumes would have had their words and croaks accompanied by an aulos, a loud double-pipe. Evidently the aulos-player was also dressed up as a frog, and was conducting the chorus by playing the melody. With his puffed out cheeks, he would have been quite frog-like in appearance.

Put out by the loud rapid croaking, Dionysus resorts to grabbing the aulos, leaving the frogs without their powerful melodic accompaniment. This allows him to assert his own pace and his own rhythm, and to win the contest. (It is the first of two such contests in the play: the second is a hilarious competition between Aeschylus and Euripides as to which is the better tragedian. A bit like pitting Shakespeare against Harold Pinter - playwrights of very different ages and styles).

I translated the Greek of the frog contest as follows, and I performed it as a one-man showpiece here for the Actors of Dionysus:

FROGS singing at a fast pace

♫   Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,             
brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!      

We children of the fountain and the lake,
let our full-throated chorus come awake!
Hear the aulos blaring out
to the loud and piercing shout
of the song we used to love,
in the marshland up above.

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,             
brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!     ♫

DIONYSUS speaking at a slower pace

Oh dear, oh dear, I do declare
your beat’s too fast for me to bear.
Shut up with your infernal hum,
I’m getting blisters on my bum.
You rowdy disrespectful lot,
it seems that you don’t care a jot!

FROGS singing to a fast beat

♫   Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,             
      brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!   ♫

  
DIONYSUS speaking at slow pace

Damn you, and your ko-axing too,
it’s nothing but ko-ax with you.
My hands are chafed and blistered sore;
my cheeks are bursting - bursting more -
and something’s coming through the cracks —

FROGS

♫   Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,             
     brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!       ♫

 
DIONYSUS

O tuneful frogs, don’t do this, don’t!
Please curb your song.

FROGS

♫ Tough luck, we won’t!

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,
brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!    ♫

DIONYSUS – seizes the aulos from the frog-aulete

Look, now I’ve seized your song from you.

FROGS speaking fast

This action means the end of us!
Can’t we some compromise discuss?

DIONYSUS  in slower rhythm    

Far worse for me my day would go
if I exploded while I row!
Your music’s gone, your cupboard’s bare,
you croak away, for all I care.

FROGS croaking fast

Fine, we’ll croak and croak our hearts out,
all day long we’ll croak our hearts out!

DIONYSUS asserting his slower pace

That isn’t going to win the day,
for I will croak and croak away.
Bre-ke-ke-kex ko-ax ko-ax!
Bre-ke-ke-kex ko-ax ko-ax!

The frogs fall silent.
 
At last those pesky frogs are making tracks!
I had to put an end to their ko-ax.

Meanwhile I note that the first ever film of Frogs is in production. Something to look forward to: https://frogsthefilm.com/nl/