by Marco den Ouden
Pioneers exploring new geographical territory. Pioneers in politics and human rights. Pioneers in science. And pioneers in music. As the topic gradually got going and opened up, new ground was broken. But we open and close our set with two songs about the pioneering spirit.
Pioneers chart new territory. They take the path less traveled. And as Elton John tells us in The Trail We Blaze, “Look out new world, here we come. Brave, intrepid and then some. Pioneers of maximum audacity whose resumes show that we are just the team to live where others merely dream.” It’s from the animated film The Road to El Dorado about two stowaways on Cortez’s voyage to South America.
There were a number of songs about the exploration of America. Cowboys, wagon trains, frontiersmen. But I particularly like Mark Knopfler and James Taylor’s Sailing to Philadelphia. It tells the story of two geographers, Jeremiah Dixon and Charlie Mason who set out to resolve a land dispute. Their work established what is now famously known as the Mason-Dixon line, the border separating the southern from the northern states. Dixon’s name lent itself to the south being referred to as Dixie.
The movie Queen of the Desert starring Nicole Kidman was a box office bomb. But the story is inspiring. It tells the story of Gertrude Bell who is sometimes referred to as the female Indiana Jones. As Wikipedia describes her, she was “an English writer, traveler, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist” who explored and mapped much of the Arabic world. She was also a British diplomat and participated in the 1921 Cairo Conference that established the borders after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The music is from Klaus Badelt.
I guess I have a soft spot for Public Service Broadcasting. This is the third time I’ve A-listed them, this time for Gagarin, the story of the first man in space. Followed by the enigmatic Armstrong by John Stewart. He sings about how the world, even street urchins in Chicago and Calcutta “all stopped to watch it on that July afternoon, to watch a man named Armstrong walk upon the moon.” We draw inspiration from witnessing such events.
Gagarin and Armstrong represent both the exploration of new territory, space, but also represent pioneering in science and technology. One notable modern day scientific explorer is Jacques Cousteau, oceanographer, film maker, author and co-inventor of
Scuba gear for underwater exploration. John Denver sings about the Calypso, the ship he leased and refitted to explore The Silent World. “Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to, the things that you've shown us, the stories you tell. Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.”
The glam rock group Sweet pay tribute to another scientific pioneer, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.
While there were a good number of songs paying tribute to civil rights leaders from Biko to Martin Luther King, one song in particular caught my ear and eye, Rosa Parks Song/I Sat on a Bus by Dominique Moore. It was produced as a part of the British television series, Horrible Histories. Because the show was designed to make history exciting for children, the song can’t be included in a larger playlist, so there is a separate link. Ms. Moore does a terrific job telling Parks’s story. Her defiance of racist laws by refusing to sit at the back of a bus inspired the civil rights movement.
We move now to pioneering in popular culture, starting with the movies. Katie Melua tells the story of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and W.D. Griffith, who formed the United Artists film studio in 1919, according to Wikipedia, “as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.” It was acquired by MGM in 1981 after sixty years as an independent studio.
There were quite a few nominations on pioneers in music. Too many to include them all, but I particularly liked Daft Punk’s Giorgio by Moroder. Giorgio Moroder was a pioneer in electronic dance music and disco. Moroder himself speaks of his career over a lowkey musical bed which then breaks into a seven minute funky instrumental. Dynamite!
TPOK Jazz was a Congolese rumba band founded in 1956 and fronted by Franco Luambo. Syran Mbenza & Ensemble Rumba Kongo tell the story in Liwa Ya Franco. Its changing lineup over the years spawned many other bands and performers. Franco was the mainstay of the band for over thirty years until his death in 1989.
The Real Ambassadors is a musical written and produced by Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola. According to Wikipedia, “It addressed the Civil Rights Movement, the music business, America's place in the world during the Cold War, the nature of God, and a number of other themes.” More than anything, the title song points to music as revolutionary in its own right. In a world of strife, currently teetering on the brink of, God forbid, another world war, the idea the title song promotes of musical artists as
ambassadors of peace and goodwill is needed now more than ever. The title song, The Real Ambassador, is performed by Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. As Louis tells it, “All I do is play the blues and meet the people face to face; I'll explain and make it plain I represent the human race and don't pretend no more!”
We close with Split Enz singing Six Months in a Leaky Boat. Ayn Rand writes that the spirit of youth is “a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead.” The young are idealistic, strive for independence, and embody a profound sense of goodwill towards others. Society does its worst to try and drum these ideas out of young minds. But it is the spirit of youth that is the pioneering spirit. Split Enz captures that spirit of youth in the song. “When I was a young boy I wanted to sail around the world. That's the life for me, living on the sea. Spirit of a sailor circumnavigates the globe. The lust of a pioneer will acknowledge no frontier.“ Not even a leaky boat will keep them down.
The Adventurous A-List Playlist:
The Trail We Blaze - Elton John (EnglishOutlaw)
Sailing to Philadelphia - Mark Knopfler & James Taylor (bluepeter)
Queen of the Desert - Klaus Badelt (Maki)
Gagarin - Public Service Broadcasting (MussoliniHeadkick)
Armstrong - John Stewart (severin)
Calypso - John Denver (SweetHomeAlabama)
Alexander Graham Bell - Sweet (TarquinSpodd)
Rosa Parks Song/I Sat on a Bus - Dominique Moore (Horrible Histories) (severin)
Mary Pickford - Katie Melua (severin)
Giorgio by Moroder - Daft Punk (Shashvat Shukla)
Liwa Ya Franco - Syran Mbenza & Ensemble Rumba Kongo (Nicko)
The Real Ambassador - Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (magicman)
Six Months in a Leaky Boat - Split Enz (ajostu)
Not embeddable in a YouTube playlist, so separately hereL
The Rosa Parks Song - Dominique Moore (from Troublesome Twentieth Century / Horrible Histories)
Some of the suggested songs that were zedded I liked enough to add to the B-List (Magnificen Men and My Boy Elvis). Nick Cave’s Higgs-Boson Blues’s mention of the Higgs-Boson particle is tangential but I really liked the song. I hesitated about including two versions of Abraham, Martin and John but they were both worth a showing. I did also like the Marvin Gaye version that was also nominated but three versions in the list would be a bit much …
The Break New Ground B-List Playlist:
First Girl on the Moon – Roxette (SweetHomeAlabama)
Ballad of Davy Crockett – Fess Parker (TarquinSpodd)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines – Ron Goodwin (TarquinSpodd)
Ode to a Black Man – Philip Lynott (happyclapper)
The Most Dangerous Woman in the World – Ani Di Franco & Utah Phillips (Uncleben)
Cortez The Killer – Neil Young & Crazy Horse (George Boyland)
Mandela Day – Simple Minds (bluepeter)
Conquistador – Procul Harum (TarquinSpodd)
The Mayflower – Jon and Vangelis (MussoliniHeadkick)
Kit Carson - Bruce Cockburn (BanazirGalbasi)
Grand River - Blakie & the Rodeo Kings (tincanman)
Being Human - Jen Cloher (tincanman)
Here Today - Paul McCartney (Fred Erickson)
Three Wheels on the Wagon - New Christy Minstrels (Suzi)
Dorothy Ashby - High Llamas (Fred Erickson)
Harriet Tubman's Gonna Carry Me Home - Long Ryders (ShivSidecar)
Higgs Boson Blues - Nick Cave (ParaMhor)
Abraham, Martin & John - Dion (magicman)
Abraham, Martin & John - Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (magicman)
Someday - Gap Band ft Stevie Wonder (Uncleben)
Tribute to Steve Biko - Tapper Zukie (Uncleben)
Sufferin' Till Sufferage - Etta James (Nicko)
Song to Woody - Bob Dylan (Nicko)
My Boy Elvis - Janis Martin (Nicko)
The Instrumental I-List Playlist:
Check Blast - Chick Corea Elektric Band (BanazirGalbasi)
Laika's Journey - Max Richter (MussoliniHeadkick)
Wardenclyffe Tower - Allan Holdsworth (BanazirGalbasi)
Mare Tranquillitatis - Vangelis (BanazirGalbasi)
Sputnik I - R.E.M. (AltraEgo)
Yeager's Triumph - Bill Conti & LSO (AltraEgo)
C'mon Do The Laika! - Laika & the Cosmonauts (Traktor Albatrost)
Tenzing Norgay - Yuri Honing (BanazirGalbasi)
Ibn Battuta - Embryo (BanazirGalbasi)
Theme for Lester Young - Charles Mingus (magicman)
Jump Monk - Charles Mingus (magicman)
Tutu - Miles Davis (pejepeine)
Ransome - Groove Collective (Nicko)
Walt Disney Sitting in a Chaise and Drinking Cordials - The Goast of a Saber Tooth Tiger (Loud Atlas)
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: Groundbreaking: songs about pioneers and pioneering. The next topic will launch on Thursday at around 1pm UK time.
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