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banjopaolo - Posted - 01/08/2012: 00:12:58
Here's a short clip froma TV show where I played with my friend Betty Gilmore a little hommage to Miriam Makeba, hope you enjoy...
merenderos97 - Posted - 01/08/2012: 02:12:21
paolo ma questo è uno spettacolo con banjo che è andato in onda su LA7?
Edited by - merenderos97 on 01/08/2012 02:13:07
banjopaolo - Posted - 01/08/2012: 02:40:09
si, eravamo ospiti della trasmissione L'infedele di Gad Lerner, purtroppo devo dire che non è stata una ottima esperienza... tutt'altro.
banjoy - Posted - 01/08/2012: 04:59:56
Very nice! What is this song about?
merenderos97 - Posted - 01/08/2012: 05:01:45
oh wow in televisione!! perchè paolo non è stata una bella esperienza?
JanetB - Posted - 01/08/2012: 06:28:37
Your banjo is lovely accompaniment for this love song. Banjo in Italy with a Miriam Makeba song....it's a small world after all.
Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 01/08/2012: 08:35:20
This is a very, very lovely version of this song. And the banjo part is great.
This is still a very popular song in Kenya and Tanzania - everybody knows it there.
It isn't, by the way, a Miriam Makeba song, per se, having originally been recorded by Fadhili Williams in Kenya in the 1940's (and it is his version that is the one that is well known in East Africa). There is some dispute about authorship - the song appears to be older than Williams recording, and both Kenya and Tanzania claim the song originates in each of those counties.
Miriam Makeba did have an international hit with this song in the 1950's, but since she doesn't speak Swahili, she learned it phonetically, and somewhat garbled the words. She sometimes sang it with an English "translation" that bore only a passing resemblance to the actual words of the song.
During the several years I spent in Tanzania in the past decade, I worked up my own distinctive version, that I played both alone, and when sitting in with various local bands (one of which wanted to record this "rock and roll' version with me, but unfortunately, my work there ended before we has the chance). My version has my own translation into English, that is somewhat different than the one that appears at Paolo's link. The most earthy, colourful images in my version were told to me as the being the "real" meaning by my Tanzanian friends. Many of the Swahili words in the song have multiple meanings, and depending on which meaning one chooses, you can find a prosaic meaning, or a more metaphorical meaning.
I don't make a habit of posting my own version of something in someone else's Sound Off thread - but in this case, I think the contrast between the two versions is interesting.
But please, don't let my post high-jack Paolo's thread.
JanetB - Posted - 01/08/2012: 08:51:29
Marc, thanks for adding to, not detracting from Paolo's post. The more discussion, information, and music we hear, the more we appreciate and feel the depth and breadth of our art.
banjopaolo - Posted - 01/08/2012: 11:11:01
Ciao Marc
thank for your contrbution to this topic: I know many version of this song, the show I did with Betty was dedicated to Makeba so we worked on her version...
I have appreciated your rendition very much, your singing is really personal and powerfull and of course the banjo work is exellent:
It's a great plesure to discuss music here with people like you!
paolo
Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 01/08/2012: 11:25:37
It is indeed a pleasure, Paolo! And it's so cool that we non-American banjo players can meet and interact in an international forum like this one. And here we are, a Canadian and an Italian, playing an East African song, on "America's instrument" ... how cool is that?
By the way, what are the chords you are using? I started out unsuccessfully trying to figure them out when I stumbled upon this other way of playing Malaika. I'm not very good at figuring out exactly how someone else plays something - I usually get distracted on route by some "wrong" original version that my fingers seem to find by themselves.
banjopaolo - Posted - 01/08/2012: 14:32:01
these are the basic chords I use:
G/D7/G/D7/G/D7/G/G7/C/C/A7/D7/G/D7/G/D7/G/D7/G/D7
in the clip I use a capo on 2nd fret so it results in A instead of G.
If you like when I have a quiet moment I can make a tab of my arrangement..
best
paolo
Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 01/08/2012: 15:08:15
Thanks for this. I was able to figure out what I wanted to understand about the chord structure from noodling around with these chords, and I may modify my version slightly here and there as a result.
Where you have a D7 - I think it may be a D7 alluding briefly to an Am by fretting and unfretting the first string briefly at the second fret - at least that's what I find myself doing. Similarly, I'm thinking those G chords may also allude to Em chords the same way - fretting and unfretting the first string briefly at the second fret.
In my version, I am basically using a G Em C D7 pattern - which is similar to the way bands I know in Tanzania play it - quite reminiscent of the chord progression in Blue Moon (the rock 'n' roll version, not the original jazz version that has a million chords). In fact I fell upon this version when I was showing Blue Moon to a band I sometimes sat in with in Arusha Tanzania, and when I told them the chords, they said, "Oh - like Malaika!". It's interesting how rather different chord progressions can work with the same song.
Thanks for the offer of a TAB - but I never read the stuff - I don't have the patience. I always figure out everything I play at tempo, and I can't do that with TAB. Someone else may well appreciate it though, and I encourage you to write it out if you're so inclined.
Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 01/08/2012: 15:15:59
By the way, Pete Seeger does a really nice version of this song on the album Strangers and Cousins that's different from the way either you or i play it. I've had that album since it first came out in the 60's, so the song was completely familiar to me when I encountered it in East Africa.
CGDA - Posted - 01/10/2012: 11:02:37
Betty & Paolo, Marc
so different, so lovely versions. Each one a fine artist!
