“The Beat Beat Beat of the Tom-Tom”

This chapter explores the extensive range of musical references in Porter's songs to view the meanings that emerge out of this eclecticism, with particular focus on “Begin the Beguine” and its history of varied interpretations in sound recording and cinema. Throughout Porter's works, the exotic, something one dreams of from home and experiences only on a rare voyage abroad, is a metaphor for the true love that is passionately desired but ultimately elusive. This metaphor appears to reflect an ambivalence that likely characterized Porter's own experience as a gay man in a heterosexual marriage in early and mid-twentieth-century America.