A series of posts about the politics and culture, the history and structure of music.
HOMELAND AND LIFE: A CASE STUDY
A lot of dangerous nonsense has been written about America’s relationship with Cuba and in the last few months a video (Patria y Vida) has gone viral, a video which is powerfully executed; a lot of thought went into the lyrics, and the driving energetic music is captivating. However emotions can be triggered by a high quality musical performance, emotions which make it difficult to do a rational assessment of what a song is all about. Reagan loved Springsteen’s Born in the USA because the music and presentation were strong, and Reagan didn’t realize that the song was sharply critical of Reagan’s America. Here is Patria y Vida and you can come to your own conclusions:
Things are definitely bad in Cuba these days, and the government is taking some pretty brutal actions. The intentions of the song’s creators and the video’s director are honourable but its power and emotion are perhaps being manipulated by those who stand in direct and aggressive opposition to the political goals espoused in the song itself. Ask yourself who is at least partly to blame for the economic failures the country is experiencing, and who is applauding and promoting the song and the video. The performers in the video:
1. YOTUEL (Yotuel Omar Manzanarez Romero) – lead singer and songwriter in the Cuban Latin Grammy award-winning rap group Orishas, he is also an actor, model and record producer
2. GENTE DE ZONA – this is a Cuban reggaeton band consisting of Alexander Delgado and Randy Malcom. They have won Latin Grammy and Latin Billboard awards.
3. DESCEMER BUENO – a Cuban singer, songwriter and producer, he formed the jazz band Estado de Animo in 1990, and the hip-hop band Yerba Buena in 1999. He was also an artist-in-residence at Stanford and taught at the University of South Africa.
4. MAIKEL OSORBO – Cuban dissident rapper. He has been detained more than once by the police who gave no cause for the detention, and in one instance he was badly beaten up while a member of the State Security police looked on and did nothing to stop the beating and in fact recorded the incident.
5. EL FUNKY (Eliecer Marquez Duany) – a Cuban rap singer born in 1981, whose music is heavily influenced by Tupac, Dr. Dre and Redman.
6. ASIEL BABATRO (who directed the video) – a Cuban filmmaker, art director and screenwriter
An explanation of some of the references in the lyrics:
1. “You, five nine. Me, double two” and later “It’s over now! It’s sixty-two doing harm” – Fidel Castro defeated the American-backed dictator Batista in 1959 to become Cuba’s new leader. Double two refers to 2020, sixty-two years of life after the Revolution.
2. “Great fanfare with the 500 of Havana” – In 2019 Havana celebrated the 500th anniversary of its founding.
3. “exchanging Che Guevara and Marti for currency” – Che Guevara was an important member of Castro’s government. Batista was finally defeated and ousted when Che Guevara led rebel troops to victory at the Battle of Santa Clara. Guevara, an Argentinian medical student, supported Guatemala’s reformist leader Jacobo Arbenz until he was overthrown by the CIA in support of the United Fruit Company which radicalized Guevara who became a major figure in Castro’s Revolution. Guevara was in his thirties when he was executed by CIA-backed Bolivian forces.
Jose Marti was a poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, educator and publisher born in Cuba in 1853. He was a political theorist and revolutionary philosopher who as a political activist fought fiercely for Cuban independence from Spain and is considered to be a national hero in Cuba. His ideology was a driving force in Castro’s Revolution but his position regarding the United States was mixed. He viewed the American government as a clear danger to Latin American independence, and he was opposed to the American embrace of capitalism. At the same time he admired the American ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy and likened the Cuban fight for independence to the American revolution. Marti died at the age of forty-two while fighting for Cuban independence from Spain at the Battle of Dos Rios in 1895.
4. “advertising a paradise in Varadero” – Varadero in Batista’s day was a luxury resort, one of the finest in the world, and during the Revolution many of its mansions were expropriated from their wealthy owners and they became museums, and the area became transformed into a cultural centre and concerts, festivals and sporting events were held there.
5. “Let us no longer shout ‘Homeland or Death’ but ‘Homeland and Life’ “ – On December 11, 1964 Che Guevara made his famous ‘Homeland or Death’ speech before the United Nations General Assembly in which he argued for “peaceful coexistence among states with different economic and social systems” but he also criticized various international human rights abuses, many carried out by the U.S. in Vietnam, Cambodia, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, The Dominican Republic and the Congo, and of course Cuba itself when Batista was in charge. He also condemned the racism in two countries in particular, South Africa under Apartheid, and the United States. He ended the speech with the words “Patria o muerte” (Homeland or death). There were two attempts on Guevara’s life while he was in New York giving this speech but he shrugged them off saying that such things just made life more interesting.
6. “There we lived with the uncertainty of the past, in a hunger strike, Fifteen friends in place, ready to die” – There is a long history of political hunger strikes in Cuba. One, for example, was carried out by Otero Alcantara, one of the leaders of the San Isidro Movement. I was unable to find information on any specific group of fifteen hunger strikers.
7. “Anamely Ramos, firm with her poetry” – Ramos was known as a staunch defender of Cuban cultural rights. For example, she used her poetry to oppose Decree 349 which was a government decree designed to suppress anti-government artistic expression in Cuba.
8. “Omara Ruiz Urquiola providing us with breath of life” – Omara Ruiz Urquiola was a professor at the Higher Institute of Industrial Design, and a vociferous critic of the Cuban medical system. She was arrested in 2019 as she was preparing to appear at a Breast Cancer Awareness event on the International Day of Breast Cancer Awareness. She is a cancer survivor herself. While in prison she found it was almost impossible for her, and for other imprisoned cancer patients, to receive cancer medication due to bureaucratic inertia. This was unacceptable to her and because of her strong and sustained vocal reaction to this state of affairs the medical system was improved which resulted in the acquisition of much-needed cancer medication for many cancer sufferers.
9. “The San Isidro Movement is still in position” – The San Isidro Movement consisted of a group of artists and journalists in Cuba protesting since 2016 against increased government censorship of artistic expression, censorship given legal weight by Decree 349 which made approval of all artistic activity by the government’s cultural ministry compulsory.
The song Patria y Vida attempts to tell “the true story, not the incorrectly narrated one”. I am not a supporter of Castro and believe that he is guilty of unacceptable crimes. Having followed the ongoing news about the Cuban situation for over half a century now, however, I have discovered that most of what has been said about Cuba by American politicians has been false, dangerously so. The American actions regarding Cuba have been far worse than anything Castro ever did. Before Castro came to power Fulgencio Batista led a military coup against existing President Socarras and took over the country in the early 1950’s. With backing from the United States he revoked many liberties including the right to strike. Then, with the help of the wealthiest sugar plantation landowners he systematically widened the gap between rich and poor and gave the American Mafia control over a network of drug, gambling and prostitution enterprises. His secret police carried out wide scale violence, torture and public executions. A resistance movement grew up against Batista’s repression and Castro took over the country on January 1, 1959.
Castro implemented various socialist reforms but many of Batista’s supporters were executed without fair trials. He set a cap on landholdings, expropriated the casinos and properties from Mafia leaders such as Meyer Lansky, judges and politicians had their pay reduced and low-level civil servants had their pay raised. He also seized the property of wealthy Cubans who had already fled the country, many re-settling in Florida. He implemented major educational reforms and improved the country’s infrastructure. Cuba initially attempted to negotiate with the United States; Che Guevara is on record as arguing for “peaceful coexistence among states with different economic and social systems” but the American response was an economic embargo on Cuba and when that created major economic problems, Castro went to the Soviet Union for support though he has always denied being a communist.
President Eisenhower financed (119 million dollars worth) a CIA attempt to overthrow Castro’s government in 1960 and assassinate Castro. In April 1961 President Kennedy authorized an invasion of Cuba which ended disastrously for the American forces. In 1962 Soviet leader Khrushchev installed Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba, as a defence against further aggression by the United States. Kennedy demanded the missiles be removed. While waiting for Khrushchev’s response the world wondered whether a nuclear war would occur which would have wiped out the human race. The North American media said nothing at the time about the American nuclear missiles already in Turkey near the Russian border. The American embargo initiated soon after Castro took power remains in effect today, the longest such embargo in history. Every year for decades the United Nations has condemned the embargo. The Cuban government’s response may not have been very fair or democratic but the video Patria y Vida places the blame for the poverty and devastation squarely on the government when a good deal of the blame rests with the American embargo.
Republicans have had considerable success in Florida by supporting the community of former wealthy Cuban exiles there who lived on their large plantations back in Cuba while they supported the murderous regime of Fulgencio Batista. The people who made the Patria y Vida video have legitimate concerns for the people of Cuba, their opposition to some of the actions of the government in Cuba are justified but when the people in the video performed this song in Miami they were given overwhelming support by the wealthy Cuban exile community 1.2 million people strong:
Gente de Zona perform ‘Patria y Vida’ at a Cuba protest rally in Miami:
Finally, a response to the video Patria y Vida by local Cuban artists:
THE CANADIAN CONTEXT
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who was also the Prime Minister, winning more than one federal election, was a great friend of Castro and when Castro took power in Cuba Canada was the first nation to officially recognize his government. The Trudeau family, including young Justin, visited Castro in Cuba more than once. Castro was particularly fond of Justin’s younger brother Michel, an infant at the time. On one occasion Pierre visited Cuba and gave a laudatory public speech praising Castro and his educational reforms. Trudeau gave the speech in Spanish. When Pierre died in 2000, Fidel Castro attended Pierre’s funeral in Canada where he was greeted warmly and respectfully by the Canadian media and Trudeau’s family. American politicians at the time were outraged at his presence but could do nothing about it. When Fidel Castro died in 2016 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid his respects and when the Conservative Party criticized him for praising Castro, Justin didn’t back down. He recognized that Castro was not without his faults (e.g. Pierre Trudeau and Castro disagreed over Castro’s handling of the Angola Crisis) but Justin gave credit where credit was due.
I leave the final verdict on the Patria y Vida video up to you.
HOMELAND AND LIFE: A Case Study – An examination of the recent explosive viral video Patria y Vida.
REALITY CHECK – From Kristallnacht to the Long March, massive floods and burning rivers, Wounded Knee to the École Polytechnique – Music memorializing real events.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE – From Nelson Mandela to Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman to Sally Ride – Music celebrating real people.
GOOD, BAD AND WRONG – From The Rolling Stones to Pete Best, from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds to the Walrus – things about The Beatles rarely said but which need to be said.
Celluloid Music
Music Left and Right
Miscellaneous Matters – Third Stream, Contrapuntal and Other Things
Dance to the Music
Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
Music Religious and Secular
Session Musicians and Supergroups – the forgotten and the famous
Rhythm Part One
Rhythm Part Two
The Great Depression – music born out of the economic devastation of the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the hellish decade (for most) that followed.
Musical Families – musical dynasties and the women left out
The British Invasion
The Evolution of Music
Crossroads and Crossbones (Musical Deaths)
Economic Inequities
Music About Music and Musicians
Musical Instruments
Weak Here, Strong There
POLITICAL MUSIC LINKS
Some months back I did a series of posts on Political Music. Here are links to those posts:
A series of posts on the politics and culture, and the history and structure of music. 34 000 songs and counting.
artwork by Murray Young
I came across the following song which was released at a time when the United States was fighting a war in Vietnam and there were sizable and frequent anti-war demonstrations across the United States. The song is called Ain’t I Right and the singer is Marty Robbins. What do you think of it? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGBVpyiW-9M&ab_channel=EnclaveRadio
Most of the political songs about war are anti-war, but not all of them are. Can the ideas in this song be defended? How accurate are they? Are they understandable? Are songs like this good to have around to make us all remember that we must make sure our political conclusions are based on reality and logic, and we have done due diligence? This song’s effectiveness stems from its emotional impact, its righteous anger. A lot of anti-war songs are also primarily effective because of their emotional impact. My own political positions are pretty far left of centre but there are also extreme leftists (as well as right wing fanatics) who are dangerously and irrationally anti-science and unjustifiably pro-violence. So, here’s to nuanced political analysis and the political activism that it generates.
The United States has recently shut down the longest war in American history, and there was also the War in Iraq, and just before that the Gulf War. Ken Burns has just done a mini-series on the life of Mohammed Ali and I remember how Ali refused to fight in Vietnam on religious grounds and they took away his World Heavyweight title and called him unpatriotic. So let’s talk about war. American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman famously said “War is hell.” Of course it is. Simple, straightforward. Anti-war songs must therefore be good. Or is it more complicated than that? If Country A attacks Country B then Country B has to defend itself so Country B’s soldiers are justified in fighting. What if Country A had a good reason for attacking Country B? That would make Country B the guilty party so Country A’s soldiers would be justified in fighting. Who decides whether the attack was justified?
Philosopher A.C. Grayling, in his book War: An Enquiry sets out the following criteria for a Just War:
1. It is a last resort after all other reasonable attempts to solve a particular conflict have failed.
2. It is initiated and prosecuted by a legitimate authority.
3. There is a just cause for it.
4. It has a reasonable chance of being successful.
5. The intention has to be to re-establish peace and justice.
6. The use of force is proportional, that is enough to achieve its end but no more.
7. Civilians and other innocent people must not be targeted though some innocent victims may be unavoidable.
Okay, who decides what is a reasonable attempt, or who is a legitimate authority? What is a just cause? In the American Civil War the North fought to end slavery, which sounds like a just cause. But the South thought slavery was perfectly fine which meant that the North did not have a just cause. What counts as as a re-establishment of peace? A completely oppressive totalitarian state populated by citizens socialized to love the status quo sounds pretty peaceful and conflict-free. Who decides which civilian deaths are truly unavoidable? How are war crimes defined and who is guilty of such crimes? That’s why we have international courts of justice, right? What if a particular nation refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of a particular international court of justice? What if the court is controlled by those with motives other than justice?
Years ago I participated in anti-Vietnam War protests after researching the matter. By research I mean using the skills I was learning at the time as I completed my Masters in political and ethical philosophy. I’m not talking about the embarrassing faux ‘research’ unskilled anti-vaxxers and others claim to perform (I’m looking at you, Nicki Minaj). Before recording his song Ain’t I Right? did Marty Robbins read State and Revolution (Vladimir Lenin) or Wage, Labour and Capital (Karl Marx) or even something more recent and less extreme like Plutocrats (Chrystia Freeland)? What about Edmund Burke or Friedrich Hayek? I’ll leave my thoughts on the Vietnam War (My Lai, Diem’s treatment of the Buddhists, Madame Nhu and all that) for another post, however, the American soldiers doing the fighting in Vietnam had been told emphatically and repeatedly that if they didn’t fight Vietnam would become a Communist state which meant, according to the Domino Theory dominant at the time, that other states in southeast Asia would also go Communist or at least Socialist, and who knows how far the expansion would continue. Communist states were described as a threat to everything every American soldier held dear. Just listen to Marty Robbins. Many of the troops felt they were protecting their families and their country by fighting in Vietnam. That’s why Johnny Cash, who opposed the government’s decision to fight in Vietnam, still toured the battlefields in Vietnam entertaining the American troops. More recently President George W. Bush (and Colin Powell) motivated many American soldiers to fight and in some cases to die, fighting in Iraq by lying about the presence of weapons of mass destruction there. Britain and Italy also supported the war (though Canada, France and others opposed it).
Bertrand Russell opposed British militarism in World War One (so did Albert Einstein) and went to jail for his pacifist convictions. During World War Two, when the enemy was Adolf Hitler, who was pretty straightforwardly evil, Russell abandoned his pacifism and supported the war effort. Russell’s position seems pretty clear cut but there were Nazi sympathizers among the British aristocracy. Oswald Mosley was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists (Fascists and Nazis) in the 1930s and he had the support of a lot of people, including several members of the House of Lords, Labour members of Parliament, and celebrities such as Diana and Unity Mitford, the writer G.K. Chesterton, the conductor Reginald Goodall, and Kim Philby’s father. America refused to fight Hitler for years while soldiers from Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and so on were dying in the fight. The United States only joined in when Germany’s ally Japan attacked them at Pearl Harbour.
THE DOWNING OF THE USS ARIZONA DURING THE JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOUR By Photographer: UnknownRetouched by: Mmxx – This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 195617., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18147474Landscape
How do you define war anyway? The members of the French resistance, including Josephine Baker, fought a war of sorts against the Nazi invaders. What about those who fought against oppressive British rule in Northern Ireland? Was that resistance justified? Were the Irish Republican Army justified in using the tactics they used? Would Curtis LeMay have been justified in winning the Vietnam War by bombing the north “back to the Stone Age” as he wanted to do, using nuclear weapons? The United States clearly lost the Vietnam War but if you ask an American today if the United States lost the Vietnam War some would argue that they didn’t really lose because they could have easily won if their hands hadn’t been tied by the unpatriotic media and the traitorous (though massive) antiwar movement. In 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that by so doing they shortened World War Two. As awful as those attacks were, the alternative was worse, they argue, because that was the only way to make Japan surrender. Some would argue that dropping weapons of that nature was not necessary to end the war. Others say that dropping an atomic bomb in a less populated area would have been just as convincing. Still others say that the bombing of Hiroshima was justified but not the bombing of Nagasaki. There are also those who point to the comprehensive fire bombing of Tokyo and wonder whether too much attention has been focused on the atomic bombings. Who is right in this debate?
Then there’s the matter of non-violent protest. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated non-violent resistance even though many died during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the mid-twentieth century (e.g. Medgar Evers, the three Civil Rights workers, the four little girls blown to pieces by the Ku Klux Klan at the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Mississippi). That explains, in part, the increasing influence of people like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Malcolm X who thought that non-violence wasn’t going to get the job done. The Black Panthers had to arm themselves for purely defensive reasons and several members of the party were still murdered by the police. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself died a violent death. Non-violence wouldn’t have done much good against Nazi Germany, South African Apartheid (remember Sharpeville), or the massacre of indigenous peoples in North America.
THE 16TH STREET CHURCH, BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, WHERE FOUR CHILDREN WERE KILLED BY A KKK BOMB PLANTED BENEATH THE STEPS IN THE FOREGROUND. THE VICTIMS WERE ADDIE MAE COLLINS, CYNTHIA WESLEY, CAROLE ROBERTSON AND CAROL DENISE McNAIR By John Morse – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=569761
It’s hard to write a political song that encapsulates the nuances and mitigating circumstances present in almost any conflict situation. I did an earlier set of posts on political music so this present post was going to be about political songs which I had left out of the earlier posts due to space. However, I soon realized that the task of doing the topic justice was simply too great. One of my sources of information is a free online database of more than 34 000 political songs written by 10 362 different authors. The site has a left wing bias, and some of the songs are more extreme than others. I am in sympathy with some of the songs but in opposition to others. The point of the last few paragraphs is that matters of war and peace are more complicated than can be summarized in a song, but at least with a wide range of songs from a variety of viewpoints one can come up with a more accurate assessment of a conflict situation than just one or two songs can offer. There may also be information from the songs on this site that one was previously unaware of. There have been some pretty awful conflict situations that were ignored by the media or covered up or minimized by the perpetrators. Also, one tends to be aware of the political musical culture in one’s own country more than anywhere else. The value of this site is that it gives a detailed, comprehensive look at some of the political attitudes at work around the world. Neo-Nazism is on the rise again in Europe, and countries such as Poland, Brazil and Turkey are led by some pretty anti-democratic leaders. Russia and China sometimes purport to be pro-democratic but actions speak louder than words. At least the existence of this database indicates that there is still a lot of intense well-organized grass roots opposition to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. We are somewhat aware in Canada of the international reach of the pro-democracy protests. The United States, however, is aggressively isolationist. For example, their Democratic Party there would be to the right of centre in Canada, and in many other developed countries as well, but most Americans are unaware of that fact.
The site is very well organized and the database is enormous, with lyrics to all the songs, information about the songs, relevant photographs, and many videos of songs. The site contains 50 834 different versions and translations of and commentaries on songs in 158 languages. There are 122 specific categories of songs including the Vietnam War (and other wars), the Rwanda genocide, The Armenian genocide, violence against women, the death penalty, child abuse, racism and slavery, the origins of war, animal cruelty, extermination camps, Hiroshima / Nagasaki as well as specific people (Maggie Thatcher, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and others). The site’s focus was initially on anti-war and anti-militarist songs but it became so large it now focuses on songs about conflicts of all kinds, not just declared wars. The site went up on March 20, 2003, the day that the United States invaded Iraq. 34.2% of the songs are in English, 27.8% are in Italian, 11.7% are in French, with smaller percentages for the other 155 languages and dialects. There are even songs in Old High German (750 CE to 1050 AD), Middle English (1100 CE to 1500 CE), Middle French (1400 CE to 1600 CE) and old Irish (900 CE). There are songs in Mayan, Choctaw, Mohawk, Cornish, Tibetan, Uighur and many others, not to mention a great many dialects, all laid out in the database stats. The site also lists the twenty-three top songs in terms of number of versions or translations. Below are nine of the songs from that list, with some background information and one or more videos of each one. The number of versions or translations in the database are given in parentheses after the song’s title.
1. The Internationale (343)
This song was officially adopted as the anthem of the socialist movement worldwide by the Second International, a meeting of socialists held in 1889. There are dozens of clips of the song being sung in various languages on YouTube. The song can also be heard being played on a music box at the end of the somewhat disturbing anti-Fascism video If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next by the Welsh band Manic Street Preachers.
Reggae version:
Tang Dynasty was a heavy metal band co-founded by Ding Wu and American student Kaiser Kuo in Beijing in the late 1980’s. They were one of the pioneering first generation Chinese yaogun bands and they swiftly became the best of those early bands. Here is their version of The Internationale:
2. Bella Ciao (227)
Bella Ciao, literally “beautiful, goodbye”, is a nineteenth century Italian protest song about the harsh working conditions in the rice fields in Po Valley in northern Italy and it was sung by the women who worked in those fields. It was later adopted by the Italian partisans as part of the Italian Resistance to the German forces in Italy during World War Two. It has since been adopted by many groups as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.
Italian anti-fascist song:
Chumbawamba:
4. Lili Marlene (120)
Lili Marlene was a German love song whose lyrics began life as a poem written in 1915. It was first recorded as a song by Lale Andersen in 1939. The unusual thing about the song is that it was extremely popular and loved by soldiers on both sides, the Allies and the Axis, during World War Two. The version by Marlene Dietrich was particularly popular. Dietrich was born in Berlin in 1901, and as soon as Hitler rose to power in the 1930’s she left Germany and settled in the U.S. where she had a successful career as both a singer and an actor. She was also actively opposed to the Nazi regime, even financially supporting other anti-Nazi Germans who fled Germany to survive. The Nazis tried to lure her back to Germany with impressively large amounts of money but she refused all offers immediately.
Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene in English:
Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene in German:
5. Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan (106)
This anti-war song was released in 1963 in response to the Vietnam War being waged by the United States in Southeast Asia. The song was sung at various anti-Vietnam War rallies and decades later it was also sung at rallies protesting the American invasion of Iraq. In 2009 Dylan licensed the song to be used in an advertisement by the British Co-operative Group. The song became a hit for the folk rock trio Peter, Paul and Mary who performed it in 1963 at the March on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
Peter, Paul and Mary:
7. Imagine by John Lennon (94)
A Perfect Circle:
Eva Cassidy was a guitarist / vocalist who had an impressive vocal range and powerful emotional voice control. Her renditions of Over the Rainbow and Fields of Gold were highly praised by other musicians though she had limited success due to her shyness. In early 1996 doctors diagnosed cancer in her bones which had spread to her lungs. She gave her last concert on September 17, 1996, ending the set with What a Wonderful World. She died on November 2 of the same year. She was thirty-three years old. Here is her rendition of Imagine:
9. Masters of War by Bob Dylan (73)
This song, sung to the traditional melody Nottamun Town was released in 1963 and is a very angry polemic against the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.
Eddie Vedder formerly of Pearl Jam:
12. Auschwitz, O Canzone del Bambino Nel Vento (64)
All together 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp in Poland, and 1.1 million died there, the overwhelming majority being Jews. Those who were not killed by gassing upon arrival died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, and individual beatings and executions. No more than 15% of those running the camp were ever brought to trial. There were early reports of the atrocities occurring there and the failure of the Allies to bomb the camp, or the railways leading into the camps, remains controversial.
16. Scarborough Fair (traditional) (49)
This is a traditional English ballad, a variant of The Elfin Knight which describes a set of impossible tasks someone gives to a former lover to prove she no longer loves him and who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The melody was used by English folk singer Ewan MacColl in 1947 who got it from Mark Anderson, a retired coal-miner born in 1874. This version, which entwines anti-war lyrics in and out of the original song, has been recorded by many people. Paul Simon and art Garfunkel were a folk duo from prominent in the 1960’s.
Simon and Garfunkel:
17. Zombie (48)
In March 1993, in Warrington, England, the Irish Provisional Army, in a stated attempt to pressure the UK government to withdraw from Northern Ireland, exploded two bombs in litter bins outside of shops and businesses in the city. Fifty-six people were injured and two children were killed. Three year old Jonathan Ball died at the scene. Twelve-year-old Tim Parry was seriously wounded and died five days later. In late 1994 The Irish band The Cranberries released the song Zombie in protest of the bombings and the song became Number One on the charts in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Iceland. The song, written by lead singer Dolores O’Riordan, later became the first song by an Irish band to surpass one billion views on YouTube. This clip is from 2016. O’Riordan died in 2018 at the age of forty-six.
Silly and satirical songs from vegetables to metaphysical dogma, inebriated philosophers to short people. A series of posts on the politics and culture, and the history and structure of music.
This song was composed and recorded by Randy Newman. After all those lyrics about imperialism and AIDS from 2000 (more from Newman later), now something that is not at all satirical or unnerving, but just a bit of fun. The singer is Harry Nilsson whose impressive vocal abilities I’ve talked about before. Notice the key changes at the 2 minute 9 second mark and the 2 minute 36 second mark, and the interesting arrangement. The song is called Daybreak – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI0ieDfbRWg&ab_channel=HarryNilssonVEVO
Songs have various complex and serious functions but sometimes it’s a good idea to just listen to a simple silly song and forget about life’s aggravations. Here’s a short one from Roger Miller whose songs are often short and silly but the words are interesting. The song is called Lou’s Got The Flu – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Zpc82j32M&ab_channel=KingElvis. He also composed ‘I’ll Pick Up My Heart and Go Home’ and ‘You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd’.
NOTE: I have attempted to include a wide range of music in these posts, including music I don’t like but which is important or demonstrates a musical idea well. Almost any piece of music is interesting in some way. I recommend at least sampling all the music here – you might be pleasantly surprised. At least check out specific sections of compositions which I have identified. If you don’t like a clip just stop and read on to the next clip.
Sometimes a song is silly as a means of deflating a serious issue or mocking something important to give the message that a particular viewpoint is so bankrupt or facially invalid it’s not worthy of debate. Think of the lives destroyed (most of them women and children) by those who condemn reproductive rights such as contraception. Now go and hire Arlene Phillips (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) who has choreographed such big budget West End musical productions as Starlight Express, The Wizard of Oz and Saturday Night Fever. The Pythons did that and they came up with this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk&t=40s&ab_channel=MontyPython
There is a brief but interesting discussion of this, and of the sketch that follows it which is about the hilarious Protestant Reformation in the anthology Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think, Think edited by Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch pages 127 to 129.
THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY MASSACRE – A PAINTING BY FRANCOIS DUBOIS By François Dubois – Current valid link to file (same source): Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts; direct link to the image: [2]Original link (museum homepage only): Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46815694
THREE FROM AMERICA
Here are a few more light-hearted silly songs from American musicians:
The Beach Boys’ album ‘Smiley Smile’ contains this two minute track called Vegetables with includes crunching celery sounds by Paul McCartney – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRSrrFOTlDY&ab_channel=TheBeachBoys-Topic . Of all the American groups during the 1960’s the most innovative was The Beach Boys though they were never in the same league as The Beatles, Cream, Jethro Tull, Procol Harum and other British groups.
Solfeggio performed here 65 years ago by The Nairobi Trio in 1956. The one in the middle is Ernie Kovacs, an early television pioneer who came up with some very bizarre television when things were much more out of control than they are now. The one on the right is Ernie’s wife Edie Adams, a singer of note, and on the left was an unknown actor named Jack Lemmon who ended up being one of the great American film actors in later years. Kovacs died in 1962. He was 42. Here is the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-tFyBLo71U&ab_channel=JacquesTutite
Sheb Wooley recorded Purple People Eater in 1958 and it actually got to Number One on the charts. It is infantile and not particularly amusing but so were many other novelty songs of the time. The main target was kids in their teens, the infamous Baby Boomers. When Rock and Roll earlier in the 1950’s became popular with teens quite a few adults said some very vicious things about it. They perceived it as anti-authoritarian and the adults didn’t like their kids to start getting ‘uppity’. The concept of teens or children even mildly challenging authority when I was growing up was a big deal, conformity was the order of the day. There was no room for negotiation, compromise or discussion. But the blunt approach wasn’t all that effective so then the music industry got smart and started releasing tracks like this one to distract the Boomers from the dangerous rebellion and lust personified by Rock and Roll. Silly songs, and sappy teenage love ballads, were used as a means of co-option. That was more effective for awhile but it ended when the Baby Boomers grew up in the mid to late 1960’s. They went from one extreme (the extreme conformity of the fifties) to the other with tracks like Horse Latitudes (The Doors), Volunteers (Jefferson Airplane) calling for violent political insurrection, and Sympathy For The Devil (The Rolling Stones), tracks which were more dangerous than any Rock and Roll song. The Boomers eventually ended up somewhere in the middle after a decade of excess and self-indulgence, of drug-taking and slamming everyone over thirty, Here is the Sheb Wooley track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jV-E09efRE&ab_channel=AllSeasonsMusic
Some of this mainstream opposition to the new music of the 1960’s took the form of some pretty savage mockery. In the early 1960’s when musicians grew their hair long starting with The Beatles the jokes about young men looking like young women were frequent and mean-spirited. Gender stereotypes were rigid and effective. Paul McCartney of The Beatles (along with the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein) used the strategy of being safely rebellious with long but well-groomed hair and larking about in interviews to soften the threat. John Lennon and George Harrison hated that but realized that being safe could get them through the door and get them some power at which point they could be their real selves again, which they did in some pretty ground-breaking ways in the late 1960’s. The Rolling Stones on the other hand were the villains, the scruffy rebels, particularly in the United States. The media played The Beatles against The Rolling Stones, and Beatle fans and Stones fans were at loggerheads. It was like the battles between the Mods and the Rockers in Britain. The reality was that the Beatles and the Stones were more or less the same as individuals. In fact, loveable Ringo Starr of The Beatles came from the poorest slum of Liverpool (Dingle) and was a tough street fighting Teddy Boy; the other Beatles were afraid to go near him when they first encountered him. Mick Jagger, on the other hand, came from a middle class family and attended the London School of Economics. But the media and the record industry are only interested in sales figures even if they have to exaggerate and fabricate their way to greater profits.
Doo Wah Diddy was recorded by Manfred Mann, a group led by Manfred Mann (he’s the keyboardist in this clip). Manfred Mann’s real name is Manfred Lubowitz and he was born and raised in South Africa. He was so opposed to his country’s system of Apartheid that at age twenty-one he moved to Britain where he formed the group Manfred Mann. This song was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich in the US but only became a hit with Manfred Mann’s recording of it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc0x7xOap4I&ab_channel=jarichards99utube
Lonnie Donegan was a popularizer of Skiffle, a sort of do-it-yourself pop music which inspired many young musicians to try to make a career from music, some of whom were later very successful at it. Here is a Lonnie Donegan track – Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bFTVi0hHs&ab_channel=JohnAtkin
You Know My Name – The Beatles. The Beatles have released a few rather silly songs such as Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Yellow Submarine . This track was very silly and amusing when it was released in 1970 as The Beatles were splitting up. It is not particularly amusing now. You decide – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZndVv-jl-U&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic
Chad and Jeremy were part of the British Invasion. They had several hits and were also one of the first to compose and record more complex works – they composed and recorded a politically satirical work in five movements called ‘The Progress Suite’. Here is one of their silly songs (the track is almost 5 minutes long but the song is essentially over at the 1 minute 45 second mark) – ‘You Need Feet’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjX6_4PDLCg&t=199s&ab_channel=EileenHack
When Rock and Roll was turned into Rock by The Beatles with their 1966 album ‘Revolver’ the result was an incredible expansion of content, style, musicianship, musical genres and musical structures. Previously a CD would come out with 10 to 12 separate tracks each between two and a half and three and a half minutes long, separated by bits of silence. Rock records began coming out featuring rock operas, classical Indian music, all manner of styles, and controversial well-crafted lyrics. Some songs lasted less than a minute, and some were longer than eleven minutes. There were rock operas (‘Tommy’ by The Who) and concept albums (‘S.F.Sorrow’ by The Pretty Things). Groups were also composing their own songs, unheard of earlier. Musical craftsmanship came first, profits later. These songs were unsuitable for radio play but the groups didn’t care. The songs were about everything from racism to substance abuse, feminism to radical leftist politics in general. Album covers were also all over the place, and some were extremely well-crafted. You also had album covers such as the one with no indication who the album was by or what it was called (Led Zeppelin), or the one with full frontal male and female nudity (John Lennon / Yoko Ono’s ‘Two Virgins’). Chad and Jeremy released ‘The Progress Suite’ and ‘You Need Feet.’
2. Wang Dang Doodle – Koko Taylor. The Pointer Sisters did a famous version of this song but this clip is much better, and much earlier, from 1967. Playing the harmonica is the great highly influential Little Walter who revolutionized the way the blues harmonica was played in the 1950’s. Walter played in Muddy Waters’ band in the 1940’s. He died a year after this clip was recorded. Next to Walter is the legendary Hound Dog Taylor on guitar. He was born with six fingers on each hand but the sixth was inactive and got in the way so one night Taylor got drunk and cut off the sixth finger of his right hand with a straight razor. Koko Taylor herself sold over a million copies of her recording of this song, which was written by her mentor blues legend Willie Dixon – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyUHkY0K8HE&ab_channel=HermesToth
3. Be-Bop-a-Lula – Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, performing the song in this clip, had a top ten hit with this song in 1956, a song written by Vincent. Vincent, who died at the age of thirty-six of a ruptured ulcer, internal haemorrhage and heart failure, had a violent and volatile life. In 1955 he was in a motorcycle crash that shattered his leg but he refused to let doctors amputate it. He wore a steel sheath around the leg, and walked in pain and with a limp the rest of his life. It was Vincent who also suffered injuries in the car crash in Britain that killed the multi-talented Eddie Cochran at the age of twenty-one. Vincent also liked guns. Paul McCartney remembers Vincent pointing a gun at his wife Margaret Russell at one point, and threaten to kill her, when Vincent was playing in Hamburg, Germany, on the same bill as a then unknown band from Britain called The Beatles. Vincent later toured the UK with The Outlaws whose young guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore, later became the lead guitarist with Deep Purple. Here’s the clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDU9FP5_B2M&ab_channel=LuizaMafra
4. Choo Choo Cha Boogie – Louis Jordan. Jordan was a bandleader who could play piano, clarinet, and a variety of saxophones, and also acted in both mainstream films and soundies (precursors of music videos). He specialized in Jump Blues and Boogie Woogie music with his dynamic Tympany Five, and though Chuck Berry and Bill Haley have described him as a major influence his music was aimed at adult audiences rather than teens – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2pRVyBmOY&ab_channel=AnichkaBanichka
There are many other such nonsense syllable songs: Tarara Boom Deay; Da Doo Ron Ron; Boogie Oogie Oogie; Yakety Yak; Sh-Boom; Rama Lama Ding Dong; Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida.
MONTY PYTHON SINGS
When one thinks of Monty Python songs one usually thinks of The Lumberjack Song or Spam, neither of which will be included here. The Pythons have come up with more than a dozen songs over the years (e.g. Medical Love Song and Oliver Cromwell) and here are two I am quite fond of but which don’t get much attention:
SOCRATES IN DEBATE WITH ASPASIA – PAINTING BY NICOLAS-ANDRE MONSIAU By After Frans Hals – André Hatala [e.a.] (1997) De eeuw van Rembrandt, Bruxelles: Crédit communal de Belgique, ISBN 2-908388-32-4., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2774313
SONGS THAT SOUND SILLY BUT ARE VERY DARK
The master of this approach to songwriting is Randy Newman. Newman wrote some very serious songs about some very serious subjects (e.g. Christmas in Capetown, and Song For The Dead) but there are many of his songs in which the narrator is a terrible person but the tone is deceptively comical. Here are some of his more controversial songs, starting with perhaps his most challenging song:
God’s Song
Naked Man
Short People (some people hated this song, completely missing the point of the satire)
Davy The Fat Boy
Sigmund Freud’s Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America
Tickle Me
You Can Leave Your Hat On
Sail Away
Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield
A Wedding in Cherokee County
Here are two songs which are problematic but thought-provoking:
2. Rednecks – this song was banned in the US in part because of its generous use of the n-word, but perhaps also because it’s a song about northern racism and it’s based on a real incident. Lester Maddox, the governor of Georgia and a staunch segregationist, was on a talk show (The Dick Cavett Show) one night, things got out of hand and Maddox stormed off the set. Newman responded by writing this song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTLHxpUQ_B8&ab_channel=RandyNewman-Topic
Some songs have silly titles, some songs are by groups with silly names (e.g. Ultimate Spinach) and the fifties also brought songs recorded by guys making fun of their girlfriends, for example: Long Tall Sally (Little Richard), Dizzy Miss Lizzy (Larry Williams), Bony Moroni (Larry Williams), and Skinny Minnie (Bill Haley and the Comets). I don’t remember any similar songs about boyfriends. These songs remind me of other songs such as Stupid Girl (The Rolling Stones) and that old 1940’s novelty hit Scatter Brain (by Johnny Burke, Frankie Masters, Kahn Keene and Carl Bean). I’m not a fan.
PARODY TWO
After The Beatles broke up Eric Idle of Monty Python invented a group called The Rutles that parodied The Beatles and released entire parody CDs. Beatles George Harrison and John Lennon loved The Rutles and George even appeared with them. Eric Idle played the part of Dirk McQuickly, the Paul McCartney substitute (Paul was not a fan). The songs played by The Rutles were brilliant parodies of Beatle songs and they were composed by Neil Innes of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band; Innes played Ron Nasty in The Rutles, the John Lennon parody figure. In 1967 The Beatles were invited to appear on the first international transmission on the first communication satellite so they appeared live, and did the song ‘All You Need is Love’ which was a sort of summer of love anthem. In response The Rutles released a wonderful parody of both the broadcast and the song with their own parody song called Love Life’. Here is ‘All You Need is Love’ followed by ‘Love Life’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHBnZeNlse8 ) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukIsUd0r0YM )
PROFANITY
Here are two songs that use profane language to comic effect. Their use is presented as a surprise and one can’t help but smile. The first one is from 1972 when the use of the word ‘fuck’ on a record was highly unusual, and a guarantee that the song would get no radio play. The second example is much more recent and the shock effect of the word is not nearly as great as it was in 1972, but the video also has good special effects. I remember in late 1968 reading a report in the underground press about a recent anti-war demonstration with half a million people in attendance. The report talked about how the minds of the cops attacking the protesters were blown away because they had never before encountered girls who said fuck. Here are the tracks –
1. Harry Nilsson – 1972 – You’re Breaking My Heart – George Harrison of The Beatles plays slide guitar on this track. Klaus Voormann (seen at the 18 second mark) plays both bass guitar and saxophone on this track. He discovered, and supported and encouraged The Beatles before anyone else had heard of them when they were playing in dives in Hamburg, Germany. He is also an artist who designs album covers, including the award-winning design for the cover of The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’. Here’s the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBmXLABEo_k&ab_channel=HarryNilssonArchive
2. Lily Allen. There isn’t enough space to describe all that Lily Allen has accomplished already. She is a singer, a songwriter, an actor and an author. Her music is comprehensive (electropop, ska, reggae), she had her own television show, she is both a film and stage actor, and she even opened a clothing store with her sister. This is a silly song but it also mocks nasty people effectively by sending the message that their viewpoint is so obviously bankrupt it is not worthy of debate, just ridicule. In that respect it is similar to ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’. Listen to the track – did you catch the key change at the 2 minute 9 second mark? – Fuck You – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFE6qQ3ySXE&ab_channel=LilyAllen
TOM LEHRER
Lehrer is a Mathematics professor, and an accomplished musician with a sense of humour. He graduated in Mathematics from Harvard magna cum laude and later taught Mathematics at Harvard and was a researcher at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. He also taught Political Science at MIT, and Musical Theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. When Lehrer’s first album was released in Britain in 1958 the BBC banned ten of the twelve tracks, which boosted sales significantly. Daniel Radliffe has called him one of his heroes, and the funniest man he has ever heard. Lehrer has written songs about calculus functions and about poisoning pigeons in the park, about the Vatican and about the great nineteenth century non-Euclidean pioneer Lobaachevsky. Here is a song from Lehrer in which he takes a humorous look at a world class scientist who worked for Nazi Germany but later became the head of the American Space Program – Wernher von Braun – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio&ab_channel=TheTomLehrerWisdomChannel
There is an old hymn declaring that all things bright and beautiful, like flowers and birds, were created lovingly by God. Apparently the composer had never heard of Charles Darwin. In order to keep things in perspective the Pythons offer a more complete assessment of reality. Here is the original song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txmpkFSoWuo&ab_channel=MichaelLiningMusic
1. Here is Every Sperm is Sacred again, but treated very differently than the original version. It is from the elaborate 2014 Python final reunion. Graham Chapman, an original Python, was not part of the reunion because he died in 1989. That reunion was also the death of Monty Python – at the end of the final performance the giant screen on stage displayed this: ‘Monty Python 1969 – 2014’, followed by the words ‘Piss off’. Since then a second original Python, Terry Jones, has also died, in 2020, succumbing to primary progressive aphasia (a form of frontotemporal dementia). Here is the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yYb65FHbDM&ab_channel=MrCircoVolante
2. The final track in this post is from what most people who follow them consider to be their best work, the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian . Despite the misinformation spread by many of its critics the film is completely respectful toward Jesus Christ and his teachings but it is very critical of those who have distorted those teachings for less than spiritual reasons. It was widely banned but it says something that a devoutly spiritual man financed the film at great cost (George Harrison of The Beatles) and even has a cameo in the picture. Ironically, the vitriol poured on the film by conservatives, and the protest marches, focused attention on the film which probably doubled its attendance numbers making it far more profitable than it normally would have been.
The song included here, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, is very upbeat and it gets at a very important philosophical point using humour. What does an atheist do about the absurdity of human existence and the absence of an afterlife? Existentialists address this in various ways. The great writer Albert Camus analysed the situation and worked out a theory whose central focus involves embracing the absurd to attain an unusual sort of happiness, but then Camus committed suicide. The Marxist existentialist and phenomenologist Jean-Paul Sartre talks about the issue in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness. In that book he contends, at great length and with great emphasis, what the Pythons are saying in this song – one deals with the meaninglessness of life by creating one’s own meaning and order on things. Fait accompli. No worries. As the clip included here says: “For life is quite absurd, and death’s the final word . . . you come from nothing, you’re going back to nothing, what have you lost? Nothing!” Here’s the track sung by Idle as he’s about to be crucified at the end of the film – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M&ab_channel=Melonhead622
After some of the silly but serious songs linked to above I was going to end by linking to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life but crucifiction is still a pretty serious subject. Therefore, I will end instead with Roger Miller doing his own short little song from his old informal and unregulated television show, a piece featuring Thumbs Carlisle, a wonderfully superficial song entitled Do-Wacka-Do – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-Y0CMGwxo&ab_channel=NevilleMatheson71
Over the years there have been many novelty songs which are not particularly insightful, entertaining or important as hard as they tried to be funny. Below is just a partial list of some of the more famous examples of these lightweight novelty songs. I don’t think they are worth linking to. If I have listed a favourite of yours I apologize. When it comes to music, as well as comedy, there is a certain subjectivity and there’s no right or wrong about it. Also, a particular novelty song may be important to someone because they associate the song with an important event or with someone special, or it reminds them of a particular musician or group dear to their heart. A song from decades ago mocking someone famous at the time but forgotten today will also lose its impact. Some songs are also simply puerile though they are aimed at teenagers or adults, while others are outright racist (e.g. Wunga Bunga Boo by George Formby, or Ahab the Arab by Ray Stevens), and some songs that were considered acceptable years ago are no longer amusing due to a change of perspective for the better (e.g. They’re Coming to Take Me Away by Napoleon XIV). I have tried to stay away from kids’ songs, and I have only included English language songs. In most cases it is the people who made the most well-known recording of the song who are listed Here are some titles, a far from complete list, for what it’s worth:
Askey, Arthur (I Wanna Banana)
Bach, P.D.Q. (Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion, and many other works)
Berry, Chuck (Run, Rudolph, Run – a Christmas Song, and the adolescent My Ding-a-Ling)
Blanc, Mel (I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat)
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The (I’m the Urban Spaceman, and other songs)
Brooks, Randy (Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer – a Christmas song)
Buchanan and Goodman (The Flying Saucer, and other songs)
Calloway, Cab (Minnie the Moocher)
Chad Mitchell Trio, The (Lizzie Borden)
Chipmunks, The (The Chipmunk Song, and other songs)
Coasters, The (Charlie Brown, and other songs)
Connor, Tommie (I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus)
Detergents, The (Leader of the Laundromat)
Drake, Charlie (My Boomerang Won’t Come Back)
Dr. Hook (The Cover of the Rolling Stone)
Five Blobs, The (The Blob)
Flanders and Swann (First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, and other songs)
Formby, George (The Lancashire Toreador and many other songs)
Freberg, Stan (St. George and the Dragonet and other songs)
Gardner, Donald (All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth)
Hollywood Argyles, The (Alley-Oop)
Homer and Jethro (The Battle of Kookamonga, and other songs)
Hyland, Brian (Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini)
Jones, Spike (Der Fuehrer’s Face, and other songs)
Marx, Groucho (Lydia the Tattooed Lady)
May, Robert Lewis (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)
Merry Macs, The (Mairzy Doats)
New Vaudeville Band, The (Winchester Cathedral, and other songs)
Pickett, Bobby (The Monster Mash)
PSY (Gangnam Style)
Ran-dells, The (Martian Hop)
Royal Guardsmen, The (Snoopy Versus the Red Baron, and other songs)
Sherman, Allen (Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh, and many other songs)
Summers, Debroy (My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes)
Digest the following information, then listen to the tracks again, and see if they make a different impression now.
A. This is Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da recorded by The Beatles from the White Album sessions during which Ringo angrily left the group, as it turns out temporarily, most of the songs were recorded by individuals working mainly as individuals, and Paul, George and Ringo resented Yoko Ono’s invasion of the recording sessions, yet on this track the Beatles are having fun. Is this perhaps one of the last times they had fun together?
B. This is a song about lynching. Sung here by Billie Holiday, she recorded Strange Fruit in 1939 and some say it marked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The lyrics, by Abel Meeropol, were inspired by Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. Holiday first performed the song at Cafe Society, the first integrated cafe in New York.
C. There’s more going on here in less than three minutes than in Mozart’s greatest string quartets:
99% of Western music has 3 or 4 (or their multiples) beats per measure but this is in 7 / 4 time.
The cymbals start out with a twelve pulse pattern spread over seven beats
The drums under the cymbals begin stressing beats 1, 4 and 7 in each bar
Alongside the twelve pulse percussion pattern the piano is working on a stress pattern of Strong Weak Medium Weak Strong Weak Weak (every seven beats) in the right hand only while simultaneously the left hand is emphasizing every second beat so since each measure has an odd number of beats, we’re talking about beats 1, 3, 5 and 7 then beats 2, 4 and 6 alternately.
The string bass is playing on beats 1, 3, 5, 6, 7
The chord progression is I, I, IV, I, V, I
The key is harmonic minor but every so often the sax plays the leading note of the minor scale uncharacteristically flat just to make things interesting
The piano does the same later using a minor third instead of a major third
The string bass gives a matching harmony foundation to the sax first, then the piano
This is Three’s a Crowd recorded by The Dave Brubeck Quartet.
D. I’m not a fan of flash mobs but this I like. The song is Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s greatest work, his Ninth Symphony, and it is the official anthem of the European Union. Beethoven composed the symphony after he became deaf. This took place at Sabadell, Placa de Sant Roc, Spain, on May 19, 2012. Is this how classical music should be played? There is some negative political baggage to symphony orchestras in formal attire in grand concert halls charging well-off people also in formal dress hefty prices to hear music like this. What would Beethoven have thought about the matter? I suspect he would be inclined to concentrate on the music and mock the elitist window dressing.
NOTE: I have attempted to include a wide range of music in these posts, including music I don’t like but which is important or demonstrates a musical idea well. Almost any piece of music is interesting in some way. I recommend at least sampling all the music here – you might be pleasantly surprised. At least check out specific sections of compositions which I have identified. If you don’t like a clip just stop and jump to the next clip.
TWO – MELODY
One way to approach music is to consider the three basic elements of all music – melody, harmony and rhythm. First consider the melody. Some melodies evoke strong emotions. How do you feel when you hear one of the songs you loved when you were age seven and happy? The song playing the night you heard that your favourite grandparent died? The song that was playing the day you first met your spouse? The song you heard the night your team won the provincial championship?
1. a) Take a look at this quaint clip of ‘Satisfaction’ performed by The Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s. Mick’s hair was considered outrageously long at the time. Brian Jones (second from the left), the founder of the band, died a few years after this performance. Charlie Watts, at the back, often looked bored. He is no longer with us. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ANhU4AcK04&ab_channel=StereoMasters ). Now here is the same melody delivered in an entirely different way, by the group Devo. You should still be able to pick out the same melody ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jadvt7CbH1o ).
2. Here is an example of a melody incorporated into a rap. This is the Led Zeppelin song ‘Kashmir’ butPuff Daddy (aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs) is doing a rap on top of it as he’s dodging a monster. This is a video to promote the film ‘Godzilla’. If you watch carefully you can see Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin at the 2 minute mark and several times between the 4 minute and 5 minute marks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4BC-Hxq9g&ab_channel=SnarlThe4th ).
3. Sometimes there is just one song but two melody lines. This is a recording by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Here the saxophone and piano are playing two separate melodies that intertwine. If you’re not into this kind of music jump to the 3 minute 20 second mark which is where the interplay is particularly well-crafted. This is called ‘Bluette’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX6CRLt6CLE ).
4. The lead vocalist on this song by Cream is Scotsman Jack Bruce who is also playing bass and cello. In most songs the bass plays harmony notes to enhance the lead guitarist’s melody line. Not here. Try and listen to just the bass notes when the song takes off from the two minute mark on. Bruce is not just playing harmony notes but at times creates his own melody line. The drummer is the great Ginger Baker and the song is ‘Passing the Time’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYRkC9mEbeI&ab_channel=AyoubBelkhiri )
5. Here is an example by the master of intertwining melodies (also known as contrapuntal music), J.S. Bach. Some of his pieces for just one person feature four, count them, four separate melodies, two played at the same time by the right hand and two played at the same time by the left hand. I find this to be extraordinary (but then I find a lot of musical phenomena extraordinary). Here is a short Fugue in G minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier Volume 1 and it has four distinct melody lines ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7apWQuBD-Q ) .
6. In this case we have a solo singer singing a different melody line from the background singers. The backing singers are also singing in different vocal ranges. Also be aware of what the single drum is doing. This is a gospel medley by the Stellenbosch University Choir from South Africa ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdsO9O4DWQM )
7. One can also have several people sing the same melody but start at different times in what is known as a round. This is a performance of the French nursery rhyme ‘Frere Jacques’ by a vocal group from Munich, Germany called Mundwerk. They do this a-cappella which means there are no musical instruments to help them which makes it very difficult to stay in tune. One of the members may possess the rare gift of perfect pitch ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa2_oWshsRM )
BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD 1966 – STEPHEN STILLS is second from the left and NEIL YOUNG is second from the right, apparently asleep here. By Atlantic Records – Billboard page 82, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88453067
8. Here are examples of two melodies created independently and later put together as one.
a) The supergroup Buffalo Springfield had a hit with the song ‘For What It’s Worth’. This first clip is from 1967. Notice a very young Neil Young at 1 minute 50 seconds. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY ) About thirty years later the lead singer, Stephen Stills, incorporated this same song into the Public Enemy song / video ‘He Got Game’ . Notice an older Stephen Stills at the 2 minute 20 second mark. Notice also who is in the background at the 1 minute 40 second mark for, as the original Buffalo Springfield song says, “There’s a man with a gun over there” which tells you where the video was shot – ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FmPskTljo0&ab_channel=PublicEnemyVEVO )
b) Bing Crosby was a musical giant who recorded the most successful recording of all time (‘White Christmas’) and he was also a good actor with a series of highly successful comedic films with Bob Hope. In this clip he sings with musical giant David Bowie who was a great singer, performer and actor. Crosby sings ‘Little Drummer Boy’ against Bowie’s ‘Peace on Earth’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADbJLo4x-tk&ab_channel=HolidayFavorites ).
c) Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, with Andy Williams, combine the songs ‘Scarborough Fair’ and ‘Canticle’ in this clip which features some very subtle singing. The two songs start to emerge at the 1 minute 18 second mark ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyPhQkZNLw&ab_channel=yootami )
9. The British band The Police had a hit with the song ‘I’ll Be Watching You’ about a very creepy stalker ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs ). The leader of the group, Sting, performed a new version of the song (the same melody, but slightly changed lyrics that take on a very different meaning) with Puff Daddy and Faith Evans as well, as a tribute to rapper Notorious B.I.G. who had just been murdered at the age of 24 in 1997. Faith Evans was Biggie’s ex-wife ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0nL7weZrp8&ab_channel=4dd7y5stars ).
CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILROAD CREW LAYING DOWN TRACKS IN THE LOWER FRASER VALLEY CONNECTING EASTERN AND WESTERN CCANADA, 1883 By Unknown author – Canadian Pacific Railway, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22943526
10. Sometimes a single song has several different parts with more than one melody. Try to see how the different sections of these songs are different from each other. Are they in the same key? Are both keys major? Is one in a major key and the other in that key’s corresponding minor key? Do they have the same time signature? Do different singers sing different parts? Here are several examples:
a) Gordon Lightfoot – ‘Canadian Railroad Trilogy’. This is about a very important time in Canadian history. Notice the key and time changes and how the third part is similar to the first part ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo6Otpgj-E ).
b) The Beatles – ‘A Day in the Life’. John Lennon and Paul McCartney trade lead vocals here. Ringo’s drumming is most unusual and perfect for the song. The middle section (Paul’s) is in 4 / 4 time except for the first bar which is in 5 / 4 time ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSGHER4BWME&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic )
d) The Animals – ‘Sky Pilot’ This is the first song by a major rock band that features phased drums. ‘Sky pilot’ is military slang for military chaplain. Notice the bagpipes at the 4 minute and 13 second mark ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0JMCaKwOUY ).
e) Gordon Lightfoot – ‘The Patriot’s Dream’. This is a song with an interesting structure and thoughtful lyrics, like this – “The Patriot’s Dream is as old as the sky, it lives in the lust of a cold callous lie”: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsaJYxzTdTA )
11. Sometimes a classical composer will take a particular melody or theme and write it down in several different ways called variations. Mozart wrote a series of complicated variations on the simple nursery rhyme ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ played here in part by Lang Lang ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07NuVQpt7vM ).
THE CRAB NEBULA – THE RESULT OF A STAR THAT WENT SUPERNOVA, OBSERVED ON EARTH CIRCA 1050 CE By NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University) – HubbleSite: gallery, release., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=516106
12. A rock or jazz musician will sometimes start with a particular melody and play around with it differently every time they play it but when you play classical music you don’t get to change the notes of the melody, so these are very different approaches. Surprisingly, some of the great classical composers were also excellent at improvising. Great rock and jazz musicians come up with versions of their songs in concert that are quite different than the versions on their CDs. Listen to The Eagles play ‘Hotel California’ in 1977, and then radically different again in 1994. Here is the early electric version ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydym4wh9Qo&ab_channel=MysticPlugRelics ) and here is the much different later acoustic version featuring superb ensemble guitar playing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5St-Fwfzlfg&ab_channel=ShaneMercuryLYRICS ) .
13. Some songs borrow short sections of the melodies of previous works, or in some cases just chord progressions, which can be done legitimately, without copyright infringement. Most legitimate replications are borrowings from classical music which are in the public domain anyway. For example:
a) ‘Blackbird’ composed and recorded by The Beatles borrows from ‘Bourée in E Minor by J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750)
b) ‘Emerald City’ recorded by The Seekers and ‘Road to Joy’ recorded by Bright Eyes both borrow from ‘ Ode to Joy’ by Ludwig von Beethoven (1750 – 1827).
c) ‘For the Damaged Coda’ recorded by Blonde Redhead borrows from ‘Nocturne Opus 55 No. 1’ by Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)
d) ‘American Tune’ composed and recorded by Paul Simon borrows from ‘O Sacred Heart, Now Wounded’, a chorale written by J.S. Bach (1685 – 1750) AND that Bach composition borrowed from an earlier Christian Hymn by Paul Gerhardt (1607 – 1676) AND that Gerhardt composition borrowed from ‘Mein G’müth ist mein Verwirret’ by Hans Hassler (1564 – 1612). The American Tune was German.
e) ‘Never Gonna Fall in Love Again’ composed and recorded by Eric Carmen borrows from ‘Symphony No. 2, Third Movement’ by Sergei Rachmaninofff (1873 – 1943). This 48 second clip offers a nice comparison between the two pieces – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxEQIyKRKlc&ab_channel=JohnClayton
f) ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story composed and recorded by Leonard Bernstein borrows from both ‘The Emperor Concerto, Second Movement’ by Ludwig van Beethoven (1750 – 1827) and ‘Swan Lake’ by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)
g) ‘Since Yesterday’ recorded by Strawberry Switchblade borrows from ‘Symphony No. 5, Third Movement’ by Jean Siberlius (1865 – 1957).
Harmony is the process of combining notes to create a particular sound. The bass guitar often provides harmony for the main melody in a rock band. You can also put notes together harmonically to form chords – minor, augmented, diminished seventh and so on. The notes usually go together in a pleasing or natural way but they can also be carefully situated to create a dramatic dissonant effect such as the famous startling jarring opening chord from A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles. Perhaps the most interesting use of harmony is when you have several singers singing together but singing different notes, notes that go together well. Intricate harmonies can be complicated and it is amazing how some singers can sing harmoniously instinctively. Here are some excellent examples:
2. The Mamas and the Papas – ‘Twelve Thirty’ – Canadian Denny Doherty, far left, is no longer with us. Second from the left is Cass Elliott who died six years after this clip at the age of 32. She had one of the purest, most powerful voices in folk rock ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWb7F1mxljE&ab_channel=TheEdSullivanShow )
3. The Beatles – ‘Because’ from their final album, ‘Abbey Road’. This is terrifyingly good three-part harmony by John, Paul and George. This is just the vocal track with the instrumentation omitted. The Beatles were unusual in that all four band members sang lead vocals ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZw8BuqU10&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic )
4. The Everly Brothers – ‘Let It Be Me’ . This clip is from the 1983 reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall when the brothers reconciled after a decade of never speaking to one another. On the right is Don, who died recently at the age of 84. Phil, on the left, died ten years earlier ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYpa7u28WU&ab_channel=BROKENBOILER1 ).
5. Pentatonix, here singing snippets a cappella of dozens of melodies using some pretty complex harmonies. ‘Evolution of Music’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lExW80sXsHs ).
6. A Perfect Circle, a heavy metal rock band, sings an uncharacteristically subtle song a cappella using very intricate harmonies. The song, ‘Fiddle and the Drum’, was composed and originally recorded by Joni Mitchell during the Vietnam War days ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B6kheJ8zks ).
7. Former computer programmer Harry Nilsson had a three and a half octave range and he wrote incredibly intricate harmony vocal arrangements. Then he proceeded to sing all the harmony parts himself (one of his songs had 118 overdubs). Almost every song he recorded had great complex harmony vocals. Here is one of the more interesting examples, called Vine Street: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ZUmqHQwW0&list=PLgaFNC_I_ZklC0068g3ow0Jyz5IXQURTC&index=1&ab_channel=HarryNilssonVEVO ).
FOUR – RHYTHM
What is the time signature of the piece? What are the stress patterns? The rhythm pattern is like the skeleton of a composition. You can create a piece without harmony but the melody and rhythm are essential or you have no piece. There is so much amazing stuff to say about time signatures that I have put them all into a pair of future posts.
FIVE – KEY SIGNATURES
The key signature tells you what key you are in, i.e. what note is at the beginning of the scale the piece revolves around. Major keys are happy, normal and pleasant, minor keys are sinister, dark and menacing. The Beatles had a big hit with ‘Hey Jude’ and, as usual, broke new ground by having the fade out last longer than the song itself. Here is a rare live recording of the group doing the song from their final days. It’s in a major key ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_MjCqQoLLA ). Now hear how it sounds in a minor key, done by Tyler Ward ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Pu0sdmBsM ). One must also be extremely good at least instinctively to construct a melodic line that sounds both major and minor, that sort of sounds all right but has a dark feeling about it. If you want to hear how it’s done, listen again to the first minute or two of The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSGHER4BWME ).
Most songs are in the same key from beginning to end. A few change once or, very rarely, twice. The Beatles again, in their song ‘Penny Lane’, make a phenomenal five key changes, and the song is only 3 minutes 6 seconds long. Note the piccolo trumpet solo by David Mason at 1 minute and 12 seconds. The key changes come at 38 seconds, 53 seconds, 1 minute and 27 seconds, 1 minute and 44 seconds and 2 minutes and 34 seconds ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rB0pHI9fU ).
Dave Brubeck composed and performed, with improvisations, a piece called ‘Tritonis’ in which the right hand and left hand are playing in different keys, which is incredibly difficult cognitively to do. The piece is also written in 5 / 4 time, which is most unusual as well.
Major and minor keys come in pairs. A major key’s relative minor contains the same notes except that the seventh note is sharpened. In this short clip Roger Miller starts in a major key then at the 25 second mark slips into the relative minor then back into the major again. He does this twice in the song. He also makes a key change shift at the 1 minute 13 second mark. The song is about a man whose brother has gone wrong but still deserves some respect – Pardon This Coffin – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLuBayHDpMs&ab_channel=BoZ%C3%B8lner
SIX – INSTRUMENTATION
What instruments are being played? Can you identify them all? There are brass, string, woodwind and percussion instruments in an orchestra. In most rock groups there might simply be lead guitar, bass guitar and drums, possibly rhythm guitar, possibly keyboards. Do you hear a theramin? Gamelan? Sitar? Baritone or Soprano Sax? James Taylor released a song called ‘Little David’ which opens with a chainsaw, hand saw and hammer as the musical instruments.
1. Here are Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin (pioneer of heavy metal music in the late twentieth century) performing an early twentieth century blues song about the devastation of the Mississippi River floods. The featured instrument is an 11th century French hurdy gurdy played by Nigel Eaton. Page plays acoustic guitar. Other instruments to look for – drums, upright bass, banjo. The track is called ‘When the Levee Breaks’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emzih-d4Cs8 )
2. This is a recording of what some (including me) consider to be Led Zeppelin’s greatest song. In this case it is performed by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and on drums is Jason Bonham, the son of Led Zeppelin’s legendary drummer John ‘Bonzo’ Bonham. Bonzo died at the age of 32. They are accompanied by various British string players as well as the Egyptian Orchestra playing a variety of instruments usually not seen in the West. In the Middle East the human voice is also considered a musical instrumental, which is how Plant tries to use his voice here at times. The work is called ‘Kashmir’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vbeilE0UrQ ).
3. Some musicians are so naturally talented that they can not only play more than one instrument they can play different kinds of instruments. It would be kind of impressive if you could play a piano and a church organ (two keyboard instruments). It would be more impressive if you could play piano and clarinet (two different kinds of instruments). Prince was an excellent composer, he could put on an amazing stage show, and he was a great singer. What is often forgotten is that he could also play many diverse musical instruments well. Two others who could play many different instruments were Garth Hudson of The Band, and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Two more examples:
a) On this recording K.T. Tunstall from Edinburgh, Scotland, plays every instrument on the original recording of this song which is called ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQmDUEv939A ).
b) Paul McCartney started out playing trumpet. When he joined The Beatles it was as a rhythm guitar player. When their first bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe, died (he was only 21) Paul took over on bass. On his first solo CD after the break-up of The Beatles McCartney plays every instrument on the CD. Here is a song from that CD called ‘Teddy Boy’. This is a song about a gang member who likes to fight and do illegal things but who is devoted to his mother. This takes on new meaning once you realize that Paul’s mother died when he was a teenager. Here is the song, with Paul on vocals, guitar, bass and drums ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxd5UG1_NTc&ab_channel=PaulMcCartney-Topic ).
4. Some musicians are known as being virtuosi, something to appreciate when you listen to music:
a) Benny Goodman and his swing orchestra played a famous jazz concert in 1938 at Carnegie Hall, an enormous, magnificent hall in New York usually reserved for classical musicians. Jazz became respectable that night. The main piece played at that performance was the lengthy, difficult ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ with a series of superlative solos from Harry James (trumpet), Gene Krupa (drums) and others. Jess Stacy’s piano solo, heard here, to my mind, is the greatest two minutes of improvised piano I have ever heard. After the first couple of bars Goodman grabs the house mike and says “Yeah Jess” – ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdD0NztzsA ). At one point Goodman himself plays an impressive clarinet solo that ends on a high A which is so high and difficult to play that people in the audience just shook their heads in disbelief but then as the note fades Goodman does the impossible – he tops it off by actually going higher, hitting the C above the A. Louis Armstrong could also hit impressively high notes, sometimes a hundred in a row as a show stopper.
b) Art Tatum was known as technically brilliant, head and shoulders above any other jazz pianist going. He came from a poor working class background and he was blind but he was truly great. They called him ‘God’ long before they called Eric Clapton ‘God’. Then Oscar Peterson came along, born in Montreal, and he was even better than Tatum. Peterson played with incredible speed and intelligence, and was classically trained. Here is a clip from a concert in Denmark, hence the rhythmic clapping. This is his own composition, ‘Hymn to Freedom’, that starts easy but gradually gets exceedingly difficult. If you don’t listen to the whole thing it is important to at least listen from the 3 minute mark to the 3 minute 45 second mark to get a sample of how good he could be ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrrZ1NnCuM ).
c) One of the most difficult classical works is called ‘La Campanella’ by Franz Liszt. Here is Alice Sara Ott playing this piece. Notice the complicated gymnastics in the right hand starting at the 1 minute 25 second mark ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-czNkyPQDA ). There have been some great classical pianists; one who combined a formidable technique with highly praised interpretations of Bach, was Glenn Gould. Today I think Yuja Wang is the greatest classical pianist on the planet.
d) Some drummers appear to be playing something difficult but it’s all flash and little substance. Buddy Rich was flashy and famous. Joe Morello didn’t say much, he was visually impaired and his style was quiet, but he could play rings around Buddy Rich and just about any other drummer who ever sat behind a drum kit. Morello was comfortable playing in unusual time signatures (5 / 4, 7 / 4, 11 / 4, 13 / 4) and he could improvise in and out of symphonic works with the New York Philharmonic. Here he improvises in 5 / 4 time starting at the 2 minute 11 second mark ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULLvIlgl20Q ). Gene Krupa, John Bonham, Stewart Copeland, Ginger Baker, Tony Allen, Dave Tough, Max Roach, Chick Webb, B.J. Wilson, Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts are also very good.
e) Other musicians famous for being able to play technically very difficult works and make it sound easy, and musically interesting, include Charlie Parker (saxophone), Chet Atkins (guitar), Nicolai Paganini (violin), Pablo Casals (cello), Gary Burton (vibraphone) and Claudio Arrau (piano).
There are songs about just about everything so be aware of the words as well as the music. Do the words and music go together? Are the words about something dangerous and foreboding yet the music is in a major key? Do the words tell a story and does the music change as the story reaches its punch line or wind down? Do the sounds of the words (the stresses on their syllables) match the music? The Kinks, for example, have written / recorded songs about everything under the sun, including:
Schizophrenia and paranoia (‘Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues’)
Drinking tea (‘Have a Cuppa Tea’)
Growing Old (‘Nothing to Say’)
Going on Holiday (‘Holiday’)
The stresses of twentieth century life ( ‘Complicated Life’)
Fashion (‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’)
The Second World War (‘Yes Sir, No Sir’)
Brainwashing (‘Brainwashed’)
Nostalgia (‘Young and Innocent Days’)
Australia (‘Australia’)
Winston Churchill (‘Mr. Churchill Says’)
Royalty (‘She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina’s’)
Hollywood films (‘Celluloid Heroes’)
Cats (‘Phenomenal Cat’)
The Meaninglessness of Some Lives (‘People Take Pictures of Each Other’)
Religion (‘Big Sky’)
Independence and rebellion (‘Johnny Thunder’)
Trains (‘Last of the Steam-Powered Trains’)
British Culture / nostalgia (‘The Village Green Preservation Society’)
Conservatism (‘Village Green’)
Eating food (‘Maximum Consumption’)
Racial equality and perfect societies (‘Supersonic Rocket Ship’)
The decline of the circus (‘Death of a Clown’)
Transgender people (‘Lola’)
Some songs are about music itself, or about famous musicians. Radio Free Vestibule did ‘The Grunge Song’. The accompanying video is about making accompanying videos. There are over a hundred songs about The Beatles. Van Halen did a wonderfully self-referential song called ‘Right Now’. This song was released in 1991 but near the end one of the captions reads “right now there is no cure” which is still appropriate these days ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMV-fenGP1g )
EIGHT – CONTEXT
If you know the background to a song it may have a much larger impact on you. The most important figure in Chinese yaogun (rock and roll) was Cui Jian who has been described, in terms of his influence on Chinese culture, as bigger than Elvis Presley or The Beatles. The oppressive Cultural Revolution lasted from 1966 to 1976 when Mao Zedong died, and for the next decade Chinese society continued to be all about the collective, the masses, ‘we’. Then in 1986 Cui Jian and his band Identity Crisis released his song ‘Nothing To My Name’ ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvn8Ql5GOYA) and it rocked China’s very foundations because it was all about the individual, about ‘me’ instead of ‘we’ and China shed its collectivism overnight because of Cui Jian, and China has never looked back. So Cui Jian was initially banned from performing anywhere as a result of the song but he went underground and periodically emerged to give surprise concerts in small towns before disappearing again. He also wrote subtle, metaphorical, indirect lyrics so he could never be accused of outright opposition to the government.
At least a hundred people died and over a thousand were injured at the protests in Tiananmen Square, China, in 1989. Cui Jian’s appearance at the Tienanmen Square protests was explosive because of the song ‘Piece of Red Cloth’. In 1966 Chairman Mao addressed an audience of Red Guards and Mao ceremoniously took a piece of red cloth and tied it around his arm and this was a signal that he supported the Red Guards who, all wearing red armbands, then launched the Cultural Revolution, and that ruined China’s economy and killed an estimated twenty million people. Cui Jian performed the song ‘Piece of Red Cloth’ with a red bandana covering his eyes. Now you know why.
Music is amazing in so many ways. It is simple and complex, comforting and uncomfortable, powerful, sappy, emotional, boring, life-saving, deceptive and political. Sometimes just let the music wash over you without thinking about it, but other times it is important, sometimes essential, that you think about what the music and the lyrics are all about.
If a song is about the horrors of war did that song come out during a particular war? Are there any songs in favour of war that came out at about the same time? Is a song about how awful the rich are released by someone who is rich (as many rock stars are)? Is a love song released by someone you didn’t know was from the LGBTQI community? If so, do the lyrics take on a different meaning as soon as you find out? Amy Winehouse had a big hit with a song about refusing to enter a drug rehabilitation program. Did you know that she struggled with substance abuse? She died at the age of twenty-seven. Did she die of an overdose? If she did does that change your perception of the lyrics of her song about refusing to go to rehabilitation? Do any of the tracks on the John Lennon CD ‘Double Fantasy’ take on new meaning when you find out that it was the last recording made just before he was murdered? What about tracks on that CD like ‘Just Like Starting Over’ and ‘Hard Times Are Over’? After Notorious B.I.G. was murdered in 1997 do the songs on his 1994 CD ‘Ready to Die’ take on new meaning? Context is important.
MUSIC TO YOUR EARS – Posts posted, planned or being prepared as we speak:
STAND TO ATTENTION, OR ELSE – Anthems, National and Unofficial. From Black Power to one small flower of eternity, from Oceania ‘Tis of Thee to Lift Every Voice and Sing.
WHY? – Twenty-five purposes and functions of music. From Pressed Rat and Warthog to Rainy Day Women Number Twelve and Thirty-five, from propaganda to religion, labour relations to storytelling.
LISTEN UP – Things to listen for when you listen to a piece of music. From Kashmir to Vine Street, St. James Infirmary to Scarborough Fair.
The Bright Side of Life – Silly and Satirical Songs
The Complexities of War
Music reminding us of Real Events
Music Celebrating Real People
Celluloid Music
Music Left and Right
Miscellaneous Matters – Third Stream, Contrapuntal and Other Things
Dance to the Music
Musical Women, Musical Men – 2700 BCE to 2021 CE
Music Religious and Secular
Session Musicians and Supergroups – the Forgotten and the Famous
According to The Kidd 
