PEACH BLOSSOMS

A person's musical tastes can tell you a lot.
Or, more often, not a darned thing.
For instance, despite the fact that I utterly despise hip-hop, rap, and pretty-much everything produced in the last twenty years, I am still very young at heart, and very liberal.

[Polite request to the peanut-gallery to shut the hell up at this point. Thank you.]


Hearing Yerushalayim Shel Zahav brings a tear to my eye. I'm a bit of a softy, and I like ballads.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzRvaS7gDJg]



Here are some of my favourite youtube moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g
La Marsellaise - a nice long noisy version. Put this on full blast late in the day and scare the CFO.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTMQJi_wDi8
Ponderous yet rousing Russian version of the Internationale. Who doesn't like a nice commie anthem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm_AmAs02rc
The Internationale again. This time in Dutch, sung by a socialist choral group that was founded in 1898 by Adolf Samson De Levita in Mokum Alef (Amsterdam), dissolved in 2002. This is probably one of the most beautiful renditions ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EHgT54Vxjs&feature=related
The Panzerlied. Well, at least the Moffen made the tanks run on time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5I-RTRBua0&feature=related
Bandiera Rossa - song of the Italian communists and of animatronic hippopotami.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIEUeMiJBhY&feature=related
Zhou Xuen (周璇) singing the four seasons song (四季歌), one of her early signature hits.
Zhou Xuen was in movies during the thirties and forties in Shanghai. She is divine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uawWkuOFBM
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sing Kelly The Boy From Killane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXvI0HaBIQY
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem perform Tim Finnegan's Wake.




Haven't been able to find The Winnipeg Whore on you tube yet, nor any other Oscar Brand songs.
".....Charlotte the harlot the girl we adore, the pride of the prairies the cow-punchers whore..."


Most national anthems leave me cold. They are fit for state funerals or drunken soccer hooliganism, little else.


I am still looking for Lung-Hwa De Tao Hwa (which, since the Shanghai purge in 1927, eternally yet with careful circumlocution recalls the martyrs shot by Chiang Kai-shek's goons). The peach blossoms at Lung Hwa are glorious, spring after spring - their fragrance is imperishable. Each year anew they bring tears to the eyes.