Saturday, April 16, 2011

Music rules 2

Music is such an important element of human culture that the best compositions rank as among the pinnacle of human cultural achievements such as the musics of Mozart, Beethoven and other masters. However, popular music and songs had also contributed to the joys of fans and even economics progress of the artists and can be a powerful tourism campaign such as the classic Taiwanese song - Grandmother's Bay which managed to charm its way into the hearts of millions and is now used to attract visitors to the Peng Hu Bay region in Taiwan. The song and lyrics was specially written by a talented artist for a singer on whom the story of his childhood spend with his grandmother at the bay area was based upon. It was reported that the administrator of the region took advantage of this song's fame to exploit it without the singer's consent to the extent of misleading visitors that a certain stretch of the seaside was the area frequented by the singer and his grandmother. The singer told media that he have no complaint about the use of his song's fame to popularize the region but to do so without his consent and his input and especially misleading people is not acceptable to him; he also said that he tried to get in touch with the officialdom but was constantly rebuffed. I dig up this song as I remember sis said she love it; and its really a sweet and nostalgic classic folk song. This popular song were sung by many singers but here below is the song as sung by the original singer:


I also remember turning on the radio as I drove home one dreary Sunday several years ago. I chanced upon The Yellow Rose of Texas which was sung by a choir. My sagging spirit was immediately lifted by this powerful song and only later I did some research on the Internet and understood that it was sung as a marching song by the Confederates during the American Civil War. As one know, war is a morale sapping business as most of the time, soldiers had to bear great amount of hardships such as going hungry, going barefoot, weary from long marches not to mention risking life and limbs during horrendous battles. So such a song to boost morale is very important indeed. Life is sometimes liken to a war with many battles in which you win some and lost some; its good to pick oneself from the defeat of a battle so as to fight again another day. By the way, the lady in the song was supposed to be a Mulatto (one White and one Black parent) and not some White southern belle such as the fictional Scarlet O'Hara.

This song also reminded me of the time when Corazon Aquino addressed the joint house of the US Congress in which she gave a rousing speech thanking America for the support she received during the momentous match against the dictator- Ferdinand Marcos. TIME magazine reported that: "Aquino saved her most impressive performance for a speech before a joint session of Congress, whose members greeted her wearing yellow ties and tossing yellow roses flown in specially from Texas; the color has become Aquino's trademark." The downfall of the Marcos regime was an incredibly stirring historic episode. After listening to that song in the car, I tried to find a free MP3 version on the Internet but was not successful; only later did I discovered that it is available on youtube. By the way, there is a convertor program that can convert the version on youtube into MP3. So if someone is feeling the blues, listening to this song might just offer some badly needed cheers!


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