"Siembamba" is sort of the South African version of "Rockabye Baby." We don't mind crooning to our kids about a baby hauled into a tree, and then falling to the ground when a limb breaks. Guaranteed, baby breaks a few limbs, too.
And so in South Africa, there was an equally charming old folk song called "Siembamba."
The genteel, nearly forgotten husband and wife team of Marais and Miranda recorded it, both studio and live versions.
Goodwill ambassadors for South Africa, and fluent in songs involving Dutch and African languages, Marais and Miranda popularized "We Are Marching To Pretoria," "The Zulu Warrior," and many other songs nobody knows anymore.
You can find most in the dollar bin of any record store that is still in business, and in thrift shops all over the world. Unless the owners of the shops are fearful of having their windows broken and their stuff looted because somebody decided they were selling "racist" shit by Marias and Miranda! Watch out, the world is not safe anymore thanks to violent social justice warriors.
The situation in South Africa is...well, does anyone care? Not really. The important thing is that the United States is a shit country, the only one in the world that somehow still has slavery. Its certainly a rotten place where blacks can't become President and aren't allowed to hold jobs, while Latinos are treated well, gays don't fear being killed, Jews can walk down a street without being punched, where anyone with a turban on isn't going to be laughed at and jeered, or where somebody Egyptian will be mistaken for a member of ISIS and told to leave the country..
South Africa, last time anyone checked, was still rife with racial strife, although if it involves blacks beating, murdering, or just driving whites off the land, that's a GOOD thing. (Maybe the Native Americans in the USA should try it).
As Peter Gabriel or Patti Smith or of course, the Nazi leader himself, Roger Waters would tell you, South Africa is fine. It's not an apartheid nation. Neither is North Korea. Neither is Turkey or Libya or the UAR or Egypt or Russia or Red China. ONLY Israel. Even though anybody can visit Israel whereas in some of the aforementioned places, you'd end up in jail, or on a skewer to be eaten by the locals. (North Korea has decided its citizens are NOT allowed to own dogs -- dogs are being gathered up and eaten. But I digress.)
In a more naive age, Marais and Miranda seemed to be encouraging folks to visit South Africa in particular, and Africa in general, and they sang happy (if not sappy) adaptations of native songs. Maybe they never had a hit like "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" based very loosely on a really bad African song few would ever want to put on a juke box, but they tried their best. Didn't they? Look out, if there's a statue honoring them, it's probably been taken down by now. (That's called being reasonable. Today's Liberal was yesterday's Fascist). Seriously, if they can pull down a statue of Kate Smith, they wouldn't hesitate to do that to Marias or Miranda. Hell, go find their relatives and demand reparations. That's fair. At least, it's fair in a world gone stark raving mad.
South African Josef Marais (Nov 17 1905 - Apr 27 1978) and Amsterdam native Miranda (Rosa Lily Odette Baruch de la Pardo, Jan 9 1912 - Apr 20 1986) were kindly people. They used to sing a folk song about "Johnny with the Wooden Leg," but after the war, and mindful of injuries suffered by soldiers, they updated the lyric to "Johnny with the bandy leg." They dressed like classical concert artists, and almost never performed anything that could be considered tasteless.
Almost never.
For any of you who are Dutch/South African, you'll recognize these lines:
Siembamba - mamma se kindjie
Siembamba - mamma se kindjie
Draai sy nek om gooi hom in die sloot
Trap op sy kop dan is hy dood
This is probably tasteless and offensive right there, because they are singing in "Afrikaan Dutch" which is an oppressive bastardization of whatever language the Africans spoke before the Dutch got there with their "my way or the highway" attitude, and those painful wooden shoes which can really put a dent in you with one swift kick.
PS the Dutch are nice people. They never colonized a country, did they? Besides South Africa? Oh, hey hey, BLM, they DID come to America, pushed some Indians around, and created "NEW AMSTERDAM" which became New York. Surely, these fucks should be made to pay for something their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. May I suggest looting every fucking windmill in Holland? That seems fair. Although looting every store in Amsterdam would be much more fun. Except the cheese stores. Gouda. Christ, you DON'T WANT IT. (Dutch lives don't matter). But I digress again....
M&M do offer the English translation in the next verse of this live recording. (Let's not SPOIL things by quoting it here!)
And so, with over-population, global warming, the fabulous pandemic, and the absolutely insane amount of racial animosity being happily driven by people with nothing better to do (and in need of looted watches, sneakers and computers), the ILLFOLKS blog happily adds to the ever decreasing posts that are UN-PC and scared to be humorous, by offering....listen to it online or download....
The delightful dead baby lullaby SIEMBAMBA.
SIEMBAMBA - listen online or download
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