Saturday, November 03, 2007
Keepin' it Real
I usually don't have a lot of patience for people who get rabid about how the "original" or "authentic" version of some song/book/movie/TV show is so superior to the popular version of the same. But every time I listen to this song I wonder what's wrong with the world. How can the vapid American knock-off be the version everybody knows and recognizes? It's not just that this version is so obviously better. It's actually offensive that somebody would think so little of an audience as to assume that turning this song into an radio-friendly jingle constitutes some kind of improvement.
P.S. Isn't YouTube amazing?
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3 comments:
Hi Eric-
That's a great performance I had never seen or heard. But I disagree with you. Harry Belafonte borrowed from African/Caribbean music traditions (to which he belonged), introducing them to the mainstream public while at the same time adapting them for the current style. How is that different from what Magic System is doing?
Anyway, the CrossTones version is still my favorite.
That is an amazing performance, but looking back I think I've enjoyed every version of that song I've heard. I don't think that makes me a Philistine though.
-jw
Oh. And happy birthday to you, me and Godzilla.
It goes without saying that the Crosstones version is the strongest to date.
My point wasn't to say that there's something categorically wrong with borrowing music from other traditions, as Belafonte and Magic System have done. And my point certainly wasn't that earlier versions are always better. Like I said in the post, I'm usually pretty impatient with people who make those arguments.
I was just commenting that in the case of this particular song it bothers me that the Disney version is so ubiquitous when it is clearly, IMHO, inferior.
I should add that this Miriam Makeba version cannot claim to be "original" either. This Wikipedia page has a pretty interesting rundown of the song's history, including controversies over copyright that I didn't know about when I put up the original post.
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