Of his latest video essay, Webdiarist PF Journey writes:
Allow me to introduce a Mandarin song to Webdiarists, as Mandarin is the current flavour. In particular it is for David Davis and his Taiwanese friends - they probably already know and love this song. And to Kathy Farrelly who is already "beijing duckling" at the moment, and to Fiona to weep by.
It's a lullaby from the emerald island of Taiwan, beautifully sung by an American Chinese singer, songwriter, piano player, and software engineer called Vienna Teng. Vienna normally sings her own songs in English. She has a number of excellent CDs out - I have two of her early ones. But this is her tribute to her mother (her parents are from Taiwan originally), who sang this song to her when she was little. She sang it in excellent Mandarin. It is beautifully soothing, haunting, drifting by the Green Island.
The Green Island Lullaby.
Sung by Vienna Teng
This Green Island is like a boat,
rocking gently in the moonlight,
So my girl,
you are drifting in the sea of my heart,
Just let my lullaby,
follow that breeze,
blowing soft on your window pane,
And my wishes will follow that stream,
to tell you endlessly.
The shadows of the palm tree,
cannot hide my love away,
That silvery moon,
will also shine on my heart,
This greeen island night is so peaceful now,
So Hey Girl,
Why are you still so tongue-tied?
So Hey Girl,
Why do you still have nothing to say?
Rudd A Dud
While most Australians were sleeping-in and trying to recover from the gluttony of Christmas Day, a certain elected official was serving breakfast to the homeless in Canberra. It wasn’t your typical political event - there was no media and no roadshow, just a few security personnel and the Prime Minister. He handed out the Boxing Day fare of eggs and bacon, a rare treat, and listened intently and with respect while guests and volunteers told him their life stories and gave their commentary on how he was doing so far.
What struck me is that while we make sport of our political leaders in Australia, and such criticism is healthy in a democracy, we perhaps need to show a little respect where respect is due. Our elected officials are not always self-serving egomaniacs. They have given a large part of their lives to public service - just ask their families. So the next time we’re calling ``Rudd a dud’’ maybe it would be wiser to give a little more credit to those who give so much.
Ashley Arthur
Client Referral Officer
Uniting Church’s Early Morning Centre
Canberra, ACT
Sounds like ...
Beautifully done, PF. As another in the household remarked, it sounds like Enya (from that other green island). The phrasing and tonality of the piece is 100% Western, to my cloth ears.
Andre Rieu's 'The Flying Dutchman' dvd has been on endless loop replay at our place. He has a remarkable flair for absorbing other musical idioms into the European canon. Also in this performance for his fellow Limburgers at Kerkrade, he introduces the four-year-old prodigy violinist Akim, whose father is African. The knockout item for Celts is 'The Last Rose of Summer', but the the orchestra's rendition of the Kojo no Tsuki is equally emotional. The camera lingers on a Japanese lady, tears streaming down her face. The background to this piece explains why.
Isn't the internet a wonderful resource for music? You can have ABC DiG radio streaming onto your desktop, prick up your ears to a Blind Willie Johnson track, learn that Ry Cooder based his Paris, Texas theme on Johnson's 'Dark is the ground', then slip across to Youtube for more.