I love good cover songs. I love them. When they’re done well, they’re really a stroke of genius – they take the song to an entirely new level. This is such an example. What was a melodic but fairly hum-drum song about and sung by (sorry, I have to say it) a white guy becomes a global human rights anthem, an immigration song, a manifesto about personal freedom, and all the good and bad parts of America and its history, sung to a world beat rhythm by men and women of every color and background you could cram into three minutes. It’s magnificent and it supercharges my social justice batteries when I need it, which, let’s face it, is pretty frequently.
Sacred Sunday: “Izithembiso Zenkosi,” Ladysmith Black Mambazo
StandardIn case you aren’t familiar with them, Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a ten-man acapella group from Durban, South Africa. The name is a composite of three things: Ladysmith is the name of founder Joseph Shabalala’s hometown; Black refers to oxen; and Mambazo is the Zulu word for axe, which Shabalala chose to imply his group’s ability to “chop down” its singing rivals. A well-chosen name, as the group has been singing for fifty years.
The group definitely sings about the Christian gospel, but Shabalala has said that he wants to make music that appeals across the religious spectrum. “Without hearing the lyrics, this music gets into the blood, because it comes from the blood,” he says. “It evokes enthusiasm and excitement, regardless of what you follow spiritually.” This makes me very happy. This is my absolute favorite Ladysmith Black Mambazo song. I love the rolling rhythm and the repetitive melody is very meditative while still being lively and uptempo.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo sounds like my childhood. I grew up listening to my Mom’s cassette tapes, playing in one half of the basement while she refinished some antique piece of furniture in the other half. Ladysmith Black Mambazo also sounds like springtime, and today is our last hit of warmth before the polar vortex closes in on us again. Put this on and throw open all the windows.
Salubrious Saturday: “Washington At Valley Forge,” Jim Kweskin and The Jug Band
StandardHappy Washington’s Birthday! …Or is it Merry Washington’s Birthday? I can never remember. Anyway. Here are some interesting trivia facts about our first President, according to our friends at The Internet.
- George Washington was 6’3″ tall, 200 pounds, and wore size 13 boots. (No word on what size boat shoes he wore. That’s pretty shoddy research, Internet.)
- George Washington lent his name to 121 post offices, 33 counties, nine colleges, and seven mountains.
- George Washington’s favorite foods included string beans with mushrooms, cream of peanut soup, and mashed sweet potatoes with coconut. That can’t possibly be right, but…OK, Internet, I guess.
- George Washington liked to breed hound dogs. One of those dogs he named Sweet Lips. …Dude. Internet. Seriously I think you’re just making this up now.
- George Washington often was incapable of saying anything other than, “voh-doh-dee-oh-doh.” …Dammit, Jim!
I think I first heard this song when I was four. Seventeen years later, I majored in international relations. Coincidence? Well, yeah – what are you, into voodoo? – but I just thought I’d mention it. I’d also like to mention that the weather in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital, is practically spring-like, so if you need me, I’ll be frolicking on the Mall, much like Washington himself used to do. …According to the Internet.
PS: My excellent friend Ryan White over at The Wheelhouse Review has begun a haiku series celebrating our presidents. I highly recommend you check it out. Oh, and you can feel really awesome about yourself since you can say, “yeah – that ‘friend’ he references on the blog, the one who gave him that idea? Yeah, I totally know her.'”
Funk Friday: “Concentration,” Quantum MC’s
StandardThis song is so wacky. (Then again, it was 1999.) It’s gotta be the most mild-mannered rap song I’ve ever heard, layered over a tight rhythm and feel-it-in-your-bones baseline. I recommend starting any conversation with, “Yeah-yeah, yeah, yeah…oh yeah.” Also, this has got to be the only song written ever, in any genre, that uses the lyric “flowing like soy milk over sweetened cereal.” Quantum MC’s were a great group that included two favorite artists of mine – Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow. I find that I tend to start the song fairly soft and then crank it by the time it gets to 3:37. What-what! Happy Friday, Tune-Up Fans.
Throwback Thursday: “Abendlied,” Josef Rheinberger
StandardHumans are social animals. We wither on the vine without interaction or companionship. And yet, what wounds us more deeply than these same things, without which life is awful? It’s a terrible truism, but a truism nonetheless, and one that I’ve been turning in my mind these past few days, for a variety of reasons. It puts me in mind of a wonderful passage from C.S. Lewis:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
What nourishes will always wound; humans are imperfect. What we need we will always ultimately lose; humans are mortal. It is a far lovelier truism that the nourishment outlasts the wound, and that our mortality does not drain the memories and impressions we gave to others. Let us bide with each other, then, while we are here. Let us be vulnerable.
—
“Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneiget.
Bide with us, for evening shadows darken, and the day will soon be over.”
In memory of Nancy Harris Smith.
Worldly Wednesday: “Amine,” Gaâda Diwane De Béchar
StandardI discovered these guys almost ten years ago outside Staoueli, Algeria, where I was spending a few weeks as an assistant trainer at a campaign training school for women political candidates. The NGO I worked for at the time ran these incredibly cool schools that still help female political party members run for office. Even though it was almost 11pm, it was finally cool enough to be outside, so dozens of families with young kids wandered around the open-air market eating ice cream. The kids chased each other into and out of various stalls; parents tried to stop them but were too tired. A pretty universal scene. One of my colleagues, a lanky Romanian woman who was approximately nine feet tall, pulled me into a hut filled with CDs and the proprietor had this song playing on his beat-up Sony boom box. I bought the album immediately. I have absolutely no idea what the words mean but I sing vigorous phonetic approximations whenever this song comes on my music mixes. I still don’t know what the lyrics mean but I do know that they play a type of very old Algerian spiritual music called Gnawa.
This song always puts me in a fantastic mood, and brings back wonderful memories of being somewhere sunny, hot, and interesting.
Termagant Tuesday: “Atomic Power,” The Buchanan Brothers
Standard[Editor’s Note: Viewers, take warning – this video shows some fairly difficult visuals of people who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]
What a bizarre historical relic this song is. Chester and Lester Buchanan wrote this song in, unsurprisingly, 1946. The lyrics are a pretty interesting mash-up of war protest and church revival, the tune a blend of 40s/50s-era kitsch and “She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain When She Comes.” The song on its own is weird, but when put against the visuals of the actual bombing campaign that the song describes, it’s very unsettling. The movie is “Atomic Cafe,” a documentary made in 1982. I deliberately chose this YouTube video to portray the song because it hammers home the reality of the lyrics.
Why am I posting this today? Because today is the first day of seven-party talks in Vienna on the future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The seven countries – Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China (basically the permanent five members of the Security Council, plus Germany and Iran) – hope to arrive at an agreement that will ease sanctions on Iran if Iran agrees to limit uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors, among other more complicated stipulations. Keep your eyes peeled, Tune-Up fans; this could be interesting. (More information on what’s going down can be found here and here.)
Modernism Monday: “Knock It Right Out,” Paul Westerberg
StandardDudes and dudettes, I’m not going to lie – I’m a little grumpy. Who has two thumbs and doesn’t have the day tomorrow? This girl. I mean, it’s Presidents’ Day, for God’s sake. It’s a mattress holiday. Unfamiliar with this term? I coined it. Let me explain. A mattress holiday is one around which every major sleep accoutrement store in the country hawks their mattress for “40, 50, even 60 percent off!” Just turn on your TV or your radio and sit through an hour and you’ll see what I mean. It only happens around Presidents’ Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, and other interesting yet minor and ultimately “huh?”-inducing holidays. So while I am thrilled some of my readership is getting a third day of weekend, you’ll forgive me if I want to make the price of admission a perfect score on a fifty-question test on Chester A. Arthur.
Beyond my annoyance of having to go into work when the rest of humanity will be out buying TempurPedics (as our founders would have us do to observe this most august – oh the hell with it), this is going to be a bananas week for your Yankette. Work will go into hyperdrive, marathon training will go into hyperdrive, other things will go into hyperdrive – it’s just all going to be a little manic. I need a good, grounding, up-tempo, pump-up song to get me ready to suit up. “Knock It Right Out” will do just fine, I believe. Everything about this song – from the perfect swagger tempo, the shrieking guitars, Westerberg’s growly voice – says, “I got this.” So – bring it.
Enjoy your mattress.
Sacred Sunday: “Oh Happy Souls,” Robert Shaw
StandardThis piece is an arrangement of an old New England hymn from around 1792. Originally called “The Slow Traveler,” it was, as far as I’ve been able to discover, published in hymnals regularly for only about a hundred years. I don’t know enough about Robert Shaw to know how he discovered it, but thank heavens he did. Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, his frequent collaborator, deserve a Nobel Prize for preserving this style of American music. There is so much of the American character in this piece. Its solid, four square construction is brave, unsentimental, and resilient. It bucks me up whenever I need it. This is a recording I pinched from my father’s vinyl record collection, which is why it sounds so scratchy.
Salubrious Saturday: “Unexplainable Stories,” Cloud Cult
StandardCloud Cult is a fantastic band from Minnesota (doncha know). This song has a pretty different vibe than some of their other work – this one is much more down-tempo and a little more synthesizer-y. But I still love the message of the song (“Activate your force fields and just keep going”), and the long brass intro is absolutely gorgeous. This is a good, calm song for a quiet Saturday after a long, long week. I hope you enjoy.
The Daily Tune-Up 