How 1940s American pop songs framed the world beyond the United States as exotic playgrounds or lands of folly and belittled non-Europeans. The songs discussed: “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo),” “The Coffee Song,” “The Maharajah of Madagor,” “Managua, Nicaragua,” and “Rum and Coca Cola.”
Categories: ZiR • Tags: colonialism, Donald Trump, international relations, neo-colonialism, popular music, songs
Le monde s’étire s’allonge et se retire comme un accordéon qu’une main sadique tourmente The earth stretches elongated and snaps back like an accordion tortured by a sadic hand Dans les déchirures du ciel, les locomotives en furie In the rips in the sky insane locomotives S’enfuient Take flight Et dans les trous, In the gaps Les roues vertigineuses les bouches les voix Whirling wheels mouths voices Et les chiens du malheur qui aboient à nos trousses And the dogs […]
Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Blaise Cendrars, Bob Dylan, Clintons, French, John Donne, Paris, poetics, poetry, popular music, songs, translation
Popular Music on the Contemporary Campaign Trail By Justin Patch {Editor’s Note: This is the first in Zeteo‘s Fall 2014 series of pieces related to borders, one of the borders here being between pop culture and politics. Or do we now best understand our democracy and its political campaigns as a genre of pop culture, a form of entertainment?} [print_link] [email_link] Musical campaigning in the US dates back to the first post-colonial campaign when George […]
Categories: Article, Fall 2014 Issue • Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, political propaganda, politics, Presidential campaigns, songs
I have long wanted to write in praise of the Bob Dylan song “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word,” a song that Dylan has apparently never recorded, but that Joan Baez has been performing since 1965. In a documentary about Dylan, Baez is shown saying that she was with Dylan when he first heard her recording of the song on the radio. She says that he said, “Hey, that’s a great song!”, apparently having forgotten that he had written […]
Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Bob Dylan, dialogue, isolation, love, Martin Scorsese, narrative, philosophy of language, poetry, popular music, relationships, songs
A very loose translation of a once better known Boris Vian lyric [print_link] [email_link] One nice morning in July, the alarm At dawn it breaks the calm “My doll,” I said, “better shake a leg” Today’s the today, not to be missed Get to the boulevard without delay To see parading the Zanzibar King But suddenly the police — we’re turned away And I replied We’re not here for you to upbraid We’re just here to see the parade We’re […]
Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: French, jazz, songs, translation
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