Spinning on Air; Recorded Music: International Versions of American Hits

Hi tonight on spinning on air we're going to hear the familiar made strange various pop hits mostly from the United States as interpreted and distorted by various people from various cultures we'll start off with a perfectly appropriate number strangers in the night as these tunes do get stranger and stranger. First in a recently recorded version from Egypt which features some fantastic and unusual trumpet playing perhaps it's not unusual to Egyptian ears but to me and perhaps to you the sound of this trumpet playing is most unusual. But the tune is familiar however disguised it might be by the Egyptian styled ornamentation on it. And then we're going to hear from Baal Sarra and his singing sitars from India. Their rendition of strangers in the night and then we'll turn to you and Gershon Kingsley for their version which sounds like it probably comes maybe not from another country but from another planet. Thanks.

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Thank you thank you. Well there are a few strangers in this night some strange renditions of that old Frank Sinatra classic from the early 1960s. It was early 60s wasn't it might have been sort of a mid not absolutely certain in my memory the kind of dooby dooby doo just sort of echoes through the ages for me not held to any specific time and obviously not held to any specific place in the world either. As we heard from Egypt first and I'm glad to say that this Egyptian CD of quote international music unquote. It was just recently released so it's wonderful to see that such odd and peculiar hybrid music is still being made. For example they do the theme from Love Story on this sort of combining it with the basic James Bond theme motif too and playing it on a on a plucked instrument from

Egypt. Happy Birthdays on here as well as his feelings. I know I'm tempting you. I'm going to play more but I haven't decided yet just which track it will be. I don't have the name of the trumpeter featured on that version of strangers in the night or stranger in the night as it's called here on the CD. Host Sam Hosni is the arranger of all the music on the cd however and the CD came to me from the Rashid sales company distributor of music from Egypt and elsewhere in that area based right in Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue. So glad to know that that's out and around. Wonderful trumpet playing. Man oh man. And then we heard from an album which was not available anywhere that I know of Basar and his singing sitar as they were that was released on mellow disc record company in London back in the 1980s. Also on it such favorites as if I had a hammer Edelweiss. These Boots Are Made For Walking and more will

return to Sarra in a little while and then. Just for fun we heard her in Kingsley's rendition of strangers in the night from their second album on Vanguard. And some wonderful music made in the early days of Mogue another electronic keyboard instruments. Now before we go on to anything else I've just got to try a little experiment it seemed to my ear that each of those three versions of strangers in the night was in the same key. And I've got to find out what happens if we play them all simultaneously. Hang on while I get everything ready. We'll let Barry and Kingsley introduce it for us. It's really a fantastic international company they are in turns out in the same

key but they're not at the same tempo. Diskettes. If you thought it was strange before how about that combination of three strangers in the night from three different parts of the globe here on spinning on air I'm David Garland here each Monday night as well as Monday through Friday for evening music heard between 8 and 11. And let's go on to the aforementioned Chinese version of the late Hank Williams as jumbo Elia. Moon tectonics. Was.

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that. Except there it is a Chinese version of jumbo lion and its wings too I specially love the little touch of the double reed instrument or bowed instrument that comes near the beginning with its own very peculiar Chinese sound as accent to the music. Great I'm out there. China and other by you. And I'm afraid I can't identify that performer. It comes from a CD I picked up in Chinatown with a beautiful and unusually folded CD booklet with the little portraits in Oval spaces of the various women who are represented on this compilation of older popular Chinese recordings. It's really great came out just on one thousand ninety two on Hong Kong's EMI label at some of the wonderful music stores in Chinatown you can find some lovingly reissued recordings of classic pop singers from Hong Kong. Long of a decades past. Very elaborate packages of multiple CDs and I guess it's a current reissue project going

on but you can find a lot of rare material there but of course unless you can read the liner notes you're taking a chance I'm glad I took my chance on this compilation. It's got several great cuts on it. Quoting the one we're going to hear next which is representative of the international dance phenomenon of the 1960s the twist. I've got a Chinese twist a Japanese twist on a French twist coming up for you the French one and sung by none other than Marie. And we'll begin with the Chinese one. Although the singer also sings in English in the chorus of this and again I can't identify the performer but boy does she have a rock. Can she ever twist. So here are some international twists. Music with a strange twist to it. Lol. LOL

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Twisting ALL AROUND THE WORLD here on spinning on air tonight I'm David Garland and we're hearing not only twists we'll hear a few more of them but also some familiar pieces made unfamiliar by peculiar arrangements from other cultures of our domestic pop hits. And so we had there an unnamed Chinese performer. I don't mean to say she's unnamed. I simply can't convey the name to you I can't translate it I can't read it so I'm afraid she has to remain unnamed. I want you to be my baby. That's apparently the title of it I don't know if that's a cover version of something from America or if it was an original piece from Hong Kong but what a great performance it was and after that we heard I believe her name is Mito Iko Japanese performer doing twist number nine. Really an incredible piece you heard her do a count down there a count up

from 1 through nine hope you were twisting the whole time. Then we heard Maurice and Les show said I think their name would translate as being something like the black jackets doing the twist to kind of today and that was recorded in 1962. Everyone was twisting by 1962 all over the world apparently. Let's hear one more Japanese twist another French one. And we'll hear a dance band from Thailand playing music for twisting also was one week. Pete. Was. Going to. Like this one. What if you work.

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They were speaking the international language of the twist spoken on every dance floor in every part of the Globe back in the 1960s at least if this is evidence of that then we can believe it at least in our fantasies. The whole world twisted it once. What if they say if everyone in China jumped. One foot into the air and landed all at once the whole earth would shatter or something I wonder. How the world which was influenced by everyone twisting the nights away back in the 1960s when all this is a dance band from Thailand. I think a bit of their Thai background shows through even in their pretty technically adept imitation of American twist music. We also heard sort of an Elvis impersonator. I would say from France he

was a member of the wildcats. And we heard him do twist a sign 12 page from 1961 and also from Japan we heard IOU Amici I believe that's the name singing Twist number as well. Gosh we're listening to all sorts of music from around the globe in imitation of American music and sometimes I don't even bother to imitate too closely. But speaking of Elvis impersonators here is a devoted rendition of an Elvis hit by the most famous of all Hungary and Elvis impersonators. Or the.

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Work. Co mon las Lo singing an Elvis Presley tune. You all know what Bush is you or are you lonesome tonight comes from an LP called Call my laws. I'm like Elvis Presley on which he does cover versions of some of the king's great hits and it does them in a slave usually accurate manner for the most part. I picked it up in Budapest in about 1988. It's a classic and it doesn't change the music much and it doesn't really bring much to it but inevitably having the song sung in Hungary and makes for some kind of culture shock.

Well we'll be getting to some foreign renditions of American tunes that kind of mix cultures and that can be a rewarding and interesting in its own way. But slavish imitations are at least good for a laugh. Let's hear a portion of a composition which you'll probably recognized as performed by the trombone was of Germany. Brian Young's translated literally his Beach Boys got paper as it would at the end. I'll spare you any more of that. BUSH time don't miss your

Beach Boys singing Beach Boys hits in German. What a wonderful cultural artifact it is but not all that satisfying to listen to I would say something that's very satisfying to listen to because it is an interpretation rather than just a recreate. Is this music credited to Roche on which I've played on spinning on air before but who can get enough of this peculiar and absolutely bizarre rendition of some of the music from My Fair Lady as it was reworked and presented as part of a film from India called Mon. And that's the title of the film again the music is Russia. And this. Listen closely. It's just pretty extraordinary how it works with Western musical ideas but ignores some of the supposed rules or at least confounds regular western expectations.

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Connie. And that's how it ends. Kind of unresolved but that's par for the course in the tomb which is full it's so wonderfully and richly full of musical non-sequiturs. One of my favorite recordings of all time those little bassoon

punctuations the out of tune brass unexpected choral touches in the harmonica all come together to make something utterly unique and that was performed by Team ina credited to her and from film units man and music by RUSH RUSH on from an EMI Odeon LP made in Pakistan. Apparently people in that part of the world are not only fond of Frederick Lo's music for My Fair Lady but they kind of like some of the compositions that Richard Rogers wrote for The Sound of Music is both sour and his singing sitar is playing Edelweiss. The S.

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Well who would have ever imagined that a song about a Swiss flower by an American composer performed by an Indian ensemble Basar and his singing sitar is performing Edelweiss written by Richard Rodgers for the musical The Sound of Music we've been hearing the

sound of some pretty strange music tonight. Most of them documents of cultural imperialism American music as its influenced music from other countries sometimes other countries have imitated the sound of the times and perhaps more interestingly they've distorted it and seen it through their own peculiar. A statics right now here's another imitation. Earlier we heard an imitation of the Beach Boys from Germany. Also popular in Germany not only a rock n roll but country in Western and cowboy music. It's hard to explain but they were rambling cowboy has become part of German culture as well. Here is an ensemble named Bob Eddy. Must a broad. Goal. But deep. Down the Father has given Alun chance they mute all gunplay softly smiled on the

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Bit that they keep. Showing. Up. Kind of a musical nightmare there. Frightening frightening absolutely scary cowboy music from Germany. Mr. Brown Dixie town by Bob and Eddie from an LP released in the 1980s and they took the idea of cowboy music and gave to it the same kind of faceless sheen that a lot of German popular music

gets its. There's a whole whole sub Jonna in Germany of music that sounds like that slick clean highly compressed in terms of its volume level and its ubiquitous musical wallpaper and a special kind of German music which gives me the willies. But let's hear another selection from Egypt this time. The famous theme from the movie Love Story. And since it's a theme from the movies they figured why not take another theme from another movie and kind of paste it on to this one. So they combined the James Bond theme riff with love story and had it played on an Egyptian plucked instrument of some kind of order or guitar like instrument. This piece ends in a wonderfully disconcerting way which is a special thing that can crop up when other cultures take on American music. It ends

on what would be called the dominant chord which is not the chord that pop music is supposed to end on it's very disconcerting. It ends in a way that implies something that would go still further. And that's one of the great things that can happen in these when a culture that does not have chord changes as a basic part of his music it's music then tackles Western music because of course our pop music is based on the idea of chord changes some very simple and often used and re-used chord changes but these cultures like the Indian culture of that of Egypt which really are not based on chord changes or even chords. Take a very free hand with some of what are our rules regarding chord changes so pretty disconcerting a cultural little gentle slap in the face. Completely ignoring our rules while sometimes seeming to play by them.

It will take you by surprise and it will make you want that final tonic chord but I'm not going to give it to you tonight on spinning on air. The. Musical mutation. Combination of cultures that really kind of

clash is perhaps more than a blend but the end result is a cumulus me experience we've been hearing a few of them tonight on spinning on air. I'm David Garland here each Monday night at midnight for this program. I always bring you something a little bit different and I think this is my good sewer performing on the quad right now from our musical side the liner notes on so that's probably the instrument applied on this one which is an album called I Love Me Out international music credited to Hossam Hosni of the arranger. It's great to know. That this is a new CD and that's such a bizarre cultural hybrid are still being made. Well let this music take us out of this edition of SPIN ROOM our I hope this program hasn't been too disorienting. Next we go on spinning on air music for the.

They're on. Hello there I'm Peter sickly. What do Bach The Beatles The Bulgarian state the male choir and the heebie jeebies have in common. Nothing you say. Oh contraire mall Freier. Each week on the sickly mix I bring together musics which may at first seem like strange bedfellows but when arranged in suites and introduced with some sneakily educational discussion prove the point that great music is well great music. Join me won't you for surely mix from American Public Radio right here on the station at the other end of the week Thursday night Friday morning midnight. We have a winter weather advisory and a coastal flood watch on. We're expecting the rest of this overnight to give us a mixture of snow and sleet changing to all rain by early morning. Well one to three inches of slushy accumulation lows will be in the low to mid 30s with 20 to 30 mile per hour winds. Tuesday daytime expect rain it'll be heavy at times with highs in the mid to upper 30s and 20 to 35 mile per hour winds.

Tuesday overnight the rain will change to snow and then diminish to flurries by midnight. The lows will be from 25 to 30 degrees. Wednesday will be cloudy with a 30 percent chance of light snow high around 30. We have one big bruiser of a bruiser of a foot storm. Facing us and apparently the city is ready for it it's going to be heavier for the folks in the outlying areas where it's not going to change to rain. Right now we have a falling barometer from twenty nine point eighty two inches the relative humidity is still 88 percent. The wind is out of the northeast at 20 miles per hour. The temperature is 28 degrees. Combine those two figures you get a wind chill factor of one degree which is 31 below freezing. We have snow and sleet falling out of the sky.