More seriously in the spirit of the day...

[pyat]

Folk singer Billy Bragg's modernized and santized verison of The Internationale bothers me. Whereas the orginal is all blood and thunder, his version is all about extending-a-hand and isn't-freedom-nice-when-we-all-share. Those are legitimate feelings, of course, but it is important to remember the time and the spirit that inspired the orginal.

Shall we compare?

The Orignal (Lit. English)
Stand up, wretched of the earth
Stand up, galley slaves of hunger
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end
Of the past let us wipe the slate clean
Masses, slaves, arise, arise
The world is about to change its foundation
We are nothing, let us be all


Billy Bragg Version
Stand up, all victims of oppression,
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don't cling so hard to your possessions,
For you have nothing if you have no rights!
Let racist ignorance be ended,
For respect makes the empires fall!
Freedom is merely privilege extended,
Unless enjoyed by one and all.

I don't know. To me, "Reason thunders in its volcano" is a lot more exciting than "Don't cling so hard to your possessions." And then in the second verse, he's replaced "There are no supreme saviours / Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune" with "Let no one build walls to divide us / Walls of hatred nor walls of stone."

I realize the new version is rather more inclusive and less violent, but... hey, I like my anthems full of old-school blood and guts. Except the Canadian one, which is required by law and tradition to be as bland as possible.

Comments

[thebitterguy]

I dunno. "When your hand does not carry a sword, it carries the cross" is not the blandest thing ever.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Which version/anthem is that in? It's not in the three verses of O Canada I had to learn as a kid.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

I believe that's in the third verse.
The one sung in Klingon.

"A place of BLOOD! A place of GORE! In STO-O-O-O-O-VO-KOR!!"

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Singing it that way would have much Mr. Liscombe's 3-6th grade music classes much more bearable.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

Can you see them in their dress rehearsal for the Kiwanis Music Festival? Their little cardboard-and-tin-foil bat'tlehs and their little stuffed wargs clutched tight, standing atop the blood-soaked bodies of Mr. Davernachuk's 4rth-graders in the gynmasium/lunchroom/assembly hall as they sang their little hearts out for Premier Davis.. how precious.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You have a cool brain, Moment.

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

I believe that's the English translation of some of the anthem's French lyrics.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You are correct, sir!

[curtana.livejournal.com]

"Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, il sait porter la croix... " which isn't quite what thebitterguy translated, but close.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, that explains it. The Anglos just needed something more stirring than "God Save the Queen." The Quebecois needed something to compete with "La Marseillaise".

[thebitterguy]

Any answer I make now would be redundant.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Not if you make something up!

[paka.livejournal.com]

Hey, Pyat. Sorry about the crankiness in the earlier deleted comment. Just too easy to be outraged these days, and the less anyone can actually do, the more outraged one can get.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

"If your Paka is not cranky, please check your Internet connection." ;)

S'all right. It wasn't THAT cranky.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

It says something that I actually considered the Canadian anthem a bit too jingoistic before I was in double digits, and got in trouble once or twice for refusing to stand.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

When I was in high school there was a lot of talk in the media about replacing it with an even blander tune because it was sexist and culturally biased.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

In my high-schools, they wimped out and used instrumental versions.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Do Canadians do the "every morning you have to stand for the national anthem" thing? I know you guys don't have a Pledge of Allegience type of deal.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

We did - and the Lord's Prayer until the early 90s. We also had Gideons coming into the schools to give talks to classes until that point as well.

Canada was an extremely Christian country, but then Social Democracies through the Commonwealth tended to be engineered by Methodists ministers.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Jeez, that's kinda offputting actually.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yup. You didn't have to, of course. There were Jehovah's Witness kids and Jewish kids and Hindu and Muslim kids, but it was read out over the PA every morning.

Did you ever see my post on Social Democracy in the Commonwealth and it's ties to theocratic politicians?
http://pyat.livejournal.com/503352.html

[paka.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think so - thanks for the pointer. Yeesh, was it one of those things like my run in with school prayer in 4th grade, where if you didn't it made you socially unacceptible with the other kids?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Not that I noticed, but then I lived in an area where almost everyone was Protestant Upper Canadian stock, transplanted Britons or Western Europeans, Italian Catholics, or Serbian Orthodox Christians.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I never remembered that.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Likely removed by that time. My little sister was still doing the Lord's Prayer in grade 8, which for her was in 1992 or 93.

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, every morning of every school day I was required to stand at attention behind/beside my desk while the national anthem was played over the PA system. We don't have a Pledge of Allegiance type of deal, though, in that students aren't asked to place their hands over their hearts and recite anything like it. I remember, however, that for a few years in primary school (until it was ruled unconstitutional, I think) my classmates and I were required to recite the (Protestant) Lord's Prayer immediately after the national anthem was played. Of course, I think we all had little idea of what we were saying really meant.

[mar2nee.livejournal.com]

In addition to singing O Canada and reciting the Lord's Prayer (while the Jehovah's Witness in the class waited in the hall), I would swear we also saluted the flag. With our hands over our eyebrows, as though in the army. I can't remember if we said anything, though.

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

Huh. This is the first time I've ever read of that. I was never asked to do that in any of the schools that I attended. I far as I can remember, none of my classrooms even had a real flag in it.

[mar2nee.livejournal.com]

It was a small town in Southern Alberta. I'm sure it isn't the only unusual thing to have occurred.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

::sigh::

I remember the days when Billy Bragg was seen as some infant terrible in the cause of radical socialism. Nowadays he seems more and more like Freddy Bluejeans (http://www1.xe.net/inthumor/):

"Less hate is what we need/So let's all spread that lovin' seed/The world is filled with hate/I want to roll it up and put it on a plate..."

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I say we replace La Internationale entirely with One Tin Soldier, because that song is so true, y'know?

ohgodpleaseno

[anidada.livejournal.com]

When I was in Brownies, there was this Guide who played the guitar. One Tin Soldier was the only song she knew. Every freaking week, we sang it. *loathes*

Um. Anyway...

Re: ohgodpleaseno

[hannahmorgan.livejournal.com]

I've been there. Although it was Christian Reformed youth group, and I was the only one who could play it on the piano. My parents made me go, because I wasn't going to Christian school anymore. I rationalized that playing it at least got me out of singing it. That song can still raise my hackles.

No wonder I skipped youth group so much.

Re: ohgodpleaseno

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It was invariably played at Remembrance Day ceremonies at my various schools. I didn't hate it, but even when I was 8 or 9 I realized it was sort of jarring, stuck there in between "In Flander's Fields" and the visiting bugler.

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

I agree that Bragg's revision is indeed sanitised, but it's also a lot less awkward to sing than the older versions, which don't scan very well. The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale) on the song implies that this was his primary motivation for composing his version.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

He also said they were archaic, which is a different kettle of fish altogether. Rule Britannia is also terribly archaic and somewhat hard to sing.

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

Point taken! And I'll admit that for all the smoothness of Bragg's lyrics, the raw imagery of the traditional British and American versions quoted in that article is much more stirring. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Also - Hi! What's new? :)

[the-town-mouse.livejournal.com]

Hi to you too. :)

Oh, I've just been my usual reclusive self, although I have been muddling through life more productively as of late (if such can be said about 'muddling'), hence my talkativeness (if one can call it that) yesterday. I'm tempted to tell you more, but I still feel a mite too self-conscious about exactly where I am in life and what I'm doing to go into much detail about them. But at the very least I can say that I will be around on your journal more often, since I'm obviously welcome. Thanks for that, by the way. :)

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

Could be worse.
Could be the Swedish national anthem, which just about drowns in nostalgia.


-Alexandra

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Does it mention that big warship that sank ten minutes after it was launched? :)

[quoting-mungo.livejournal.com]

Too recent, I'm afraid.
It has a couple lines that imply reference to either vikings or Queen Kristina's days when Sweden consisted of Sweden, Norway, Finland and much of Denmark (iirc).


-Alexandra

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

"Reason thunders in its volcano" is as non sequitorial as "intemperance rattling in its cupboard."

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I don't know. What if I metaphorically locked my intemperance in the spiritual cupboard?