h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Heh heh! I should look up hog-calling on YT ...

Anyways now for a modern song. My boss Eunice really likes this guy. In this vid you can see some scenes from present-day Johannesburg.

'Die Brug' (The Bridge) by Elvis Blue.

Lyrics:

I was under water but you were the bridge.

Sometimes you just have to reach out with your hand
And feel the wind breaking between your fingers
Sometimes you have to wait even though it hurts
That I learnt from you

Now I'm standing here outside
Now I'm standing in your light
I only see our future
And I don't look back any more
O-ho I was under water but you were the bridge

Some places feel closer to the sun
When I stand next to you I feel that again
The fire you light inside me
The light that breaks through the darkness

Now I'm standing here outside etc.

Oops here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnzJSHjo-4M

Great video! Catchy tune, too, with a strong rhythm.

I'll post some more of my boss' suggestions then!

Now for a patriotic song. Were you kids also expected to do this? We started each day at school with an assembly, all of us sitting in the school square on the bare concrete. Flags were raised, the principal and/or other teachers gave speeches, and we sang hymns and songs like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpdtbTBbM_c

The Song of Young South Africa

And do you hear the mighty rumbling?
Over the veld it comes gliding
The song of a nation's awakening
Which makes hearts shudder and tremble

From Cape-land to up in the North
Arise the resounding, loud chords
It is the song of young South Africa

The knock of the wheel of the Voortrekker wagon
Disturbed the rest of ages
The sound of the front-loader's shots
Was heard by cliffs and ravines
The animals stood still and listened
The trees trembled and whispered
It is the coming of young South Africa

Where the sun's glow, in glory,
Stroked the frowning foreheads of the mountains
Where the murmuring wind over the plains
Frolics and plays with the grasses
The land that our ancestors bought
And baptized with blood as our own
It is the land of young South Africa

The rolling veld is our home
And our roof is the heaven blue
Freedom alone is our king
Its slogan is 'maintain and build'
The struggle that was started by our fathers
Will rage until we're dead or victorious
This is the oath of young South Africa

Wow! That's some song. I can't remember any songs about muzzle-loaders, although our national anthem is pretty wretched, what with the rockets, etc.

When we were kids, we did the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer. (That was before the Supreme Court stepped in.) The patriotic songs were kind of low-key in the 50s, surprisingly. One was about the 50 states - we sang them all in alphabetical order. It was sort of frivolous...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9jjnefxanM

Warning: they do it twice, so don't listen to all of it if you don't want a list-induced headache.

Heh heh that video reminds me of some music over here ... things that aren't really songs, but that are put to music, not very satisfactorily as far as I'm concerned. Tom Lehrer does it better ...

OK back to Afrikaans music. 'Die Heuwels Fantasties' ('The Hills Fantastic') is a present-day pop/rock outfit. This is 'Pille vir Kersfees' ('Pills for Christmas') and the video shows some of the more informal settlements around Cape Town. Musically a bit of auto-tune there which I don't care much for ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noCC_SUqGyQ

Lyrics:

It's funny how this building
Can wrap its arms around you and me
While the electric cloud blanket
Comes gliding over the flat mountain
And holds us safely
To witness the arson

I want pills for Christmas
For my carved-up nerves
Nothing a little time by the sea can't cure
But who wants pills for Christmas
It depends upon whose house I'm gonna be at
A price promotion phenomenon
So much to be thankful for

Omnipresent
Your neighbor demands tolerance
But acts superfluously
In this time of togetherness
Jet setters, caterers,
Bacchus and all his friends

I want pills for Christmas etc.

If your home is
Where your heart is
Then what wants to break out of my chest
Genetically loaded to escape
The plasm that spits
A writhing mass too much damage done

I want pills for Christmas etc.

Ah, you have those, too - sentiment in the right place, but the music is an instant cliche... You could almost swear you've heard that exact same 'tune' a couple of dozen times already...

The thing is, it's actually not that hard to create music that sounds unique. But that means trying something new, and that means you just might sound uncool. There are bands who really don't care about being cool ... sometimes that approach works, sometimes it doesn't.

Here's David Kramer again, in the 'boeremusiek' folk style. The video shows the Klein Karoo, Outeniqua Mountain, Langeberg and Swartberg regions, you might like - a very showy part of our country. I've only been there once but it was memorable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp6sJ8OC3aQ

Lyrics:

Montagu, I drink your muscadel
Here I sit here on my couch, my feet on the springbok skin
The Klein Karoo or in Kannaland
The sun sets the Langeberg on fire

So tell me who you are?
A Hofmeyr from Montagu
Married to a Van Deventer from Barrydale
I know your dad's aunt on Bonnievale
Yes, she was a La Grange from Ladysmith
Rossouw she was married, yes I now understand it

Café on the corner has a red tin roof
The walls are hollow, adverts glued on
Drink a Coca Cola, smoke Springbok tobacco
And out in the sun lies a sleeping mutt

Kogmanskloof, the Outeniquas
White lies the snow on the Tradouws Pass
As crooked as the stem of a calabash pipe
And slowly the brandy grapes ripen

Montagu (etc. except it's now a zebra skin)

Hey Dmitri, you out there?

Yeah, sorry - I got snowed under yesterday, and didn't have time to give this my full attention.

What a great video! Very upbeat music, sounds like some of the older country music from here. Good pictures! They make the area look like Mississippi - if Mississippi had mountains and herds of wild ostriches...

It had stores like that in the sixties, though, and lazy hound dogs...

I loved the 'cat crossing' sign.

Glad you saw it! That song's a cure for gloominess

They actually farm ostriches in the Klein Karoo, it's perhaps the region's biggest industry! The vineyards are more to the south and west. We've lots of small stores like that all over rural South Africa ...

Maybe when I get to take another drive I should take a few shots of the interesting places along the way...

Please do! would like to have them!

I'll see what I can do!

Are you getting a feel for South Africa from these songs and vids?

OK ... for balance I'm not always posting vids that I like, but ones that are interesting one way or another. So ... here's one of our biggest bumholes, Steve Hofmeyr. Now this is a passable song ... not bad but certainly not amazingly good. It's fairly typical of his stuff. But he has massive popularity amongst Afrikaners, especially ones of more conservative bent. He says borderline-racist things a lot, and has a massive ego. And he has sort of proclaimed himself as 'spokesman for the Afrikaans people' and then used this platform to say many stupid and contentious things. If he's one of the best we got, then we're in trouble.

Still, the video and the song have their moments. Just because a creative person is an bumhole, doesn't mean that he or she can't produce good art. I like in this video that Steve gets gagged ... that should happen more often. Anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7XgF-ncIHk

'Diefie Duifie' (Little thief, little dove - a term of endearment in Afrikaans)

Lyrics:

Even though you say my songs make you blue
Even though you laugh at me in your sleeve
Even though you say I am becoming your greatest burden
You make me remember the way it used to be

Even if you shuffle in front of me
To songs of Elvis and Gé

Look, here we stand alone
Am I a stranger to you?
My little love, my little body,
My little thief, my little dove,
I'll stay

Even if you place a guard in front of my mouth
Even if you rub more salt into the wound
Even if you kiss the Springbok team
Even if you do it all because you can

Even if you shuffle in front of me
With Stoffel and Elvis and Gé

Look, here we stand alone etc.

There is much laughter over here - Elektra looked over...she said, 'I guess every country's got somebody like that. Just don't get too many of them.'

He seems to fancy himself as a rock god... I liked the comments. Does 'rooineck' mean what I think it means?

Yes, definitely getting a feel here...

There's a comedian over here I kind of liked...until he went on tour with Larry, the Cable Guy, who's obnoxious like that.

Hi Dmitri! 'Rooinek' means 'redneck' of course but over here we use the term for all English-South Africans.

OK here's another character, but this one I like! It's Koos Kombuis (Jim Kitchen). Real name André Le Roux Du Toit. He also used the pen name André Letoit. Writer, poet, musician. He had serious mental illness problems and I even met a psychiatrist who treated him, while I was being treated myself. Also super-intelligent. Was always a part of Afrikaner 'counter-culture', protesting against Apartheid and rebelling against authoritarianism. Was part of the "Voëlvry" (which can mean 'free as a bird', OR 'wanted dead or alive', OR 'penis freedom' movement. He wrote a book about his adventures, called 'Sex, Drugs and Boeremusiek'.

So here's the song: 'Bicycle Sonder 'n Slot':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m66t--Yxn8

Karin, do you remember our visits with cold drinks
Alone in the Kaia [shack] of youth-time's green?
Do you remember the days of school benches and candles
And nights with dogs and things to do?

I bring you flowers
I give you joy
I lend you my bicycle without a lock
I know it is late
And your parents are asleep
But I just had to tell you
I love you like the Cape

Together we climbed outside in the summer
And rode our bikes all on the seam of a dream
What are you when you're grown-up, is life only up-stream?
All our questions fluttered like kites in a tree

I bring you flowers etc.

Karin, do you understand that years like wine
Can age in cans full of friendship and sun?
Do you know that only children can love dear Jesus
But that children will astonish the world more and more?

Well, 'vogelfrei' means *two* of those things in German....

What a lovely song! I suspect he's a pretty cool dude.

I wonder if you know this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Bxbu4IsvE

No, I don't know that one, thanks! Now, I've never had a taste of watermelon wine, but watermelon watermelons I like just fine.

As for old dogs ... my old, faithful cat Poplap was just the best.

As for children ... well, all to often they are indeed taught to hate.

Anyways, back to the topic! Here's a song by Coenie de Villiers.

Karoo Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCw4TfdesgA

When night buttons its coat over the veld
And lets the zodiac lie brightly against Scorpio
When Gemini and Cancer dance a cotillion over Beaufort-West
And the moon pours its cup over Graaf-Reinett

Do you smell Catbush and Kambroo
When it rains in the Klein Karoo?
My Hantam-wind, my picked-up child
Tonight, here tonight

In the morning when it becomes blue
And the amber clouds stir
When the sun pushes its first light over the Bitterboela
When the train whistles at Noupoort
And it fades away in the wind
And a tumbleweed blows up somewhere against the ridge

Do you smell etc.

Notes:

- None of Graaf-Reinett, Beaufort West or Noupoort are actually in the klein Karoo, and neither is the Hantam region. That is a semi-desert region much more to the west.

- Kambroo is a plant with an edible tuber that grows in dry regions; the big tuber is a store of food and moisture to last the plants through tough times.

- Katbos is the name for several species from the asparagus family. They're typically somewhat thorny scrambling plants.

- I've no idea what either katbos or kambroo smell like - or indeed if you might smell them better if it rains

- Bitterboela is a local member of the pumpkin/cucumber family.

- Local tumbleweeds are not at all related to the ones in America but are actually the large, detached inflorescences of members of the Amaryllis family. As these inflorescences blow over the countryside they scatter seeds as far as they go.

Very cheerful song, and full of botanical information!

I wonder if we could write something about the 'plants of Earth', or some such?

What, the plants of Earth? That's a bit of a tall order! It'll take a solid entry - in my view - just to explain what is or isn't a plant! How does one simplify that into a single article?

I was thinking about a song lyric.