Tuesday, July 01, 2008

A goofy dancer, but...

...what a great idea (and travel agent) he had. And how cool to see how much people all over the world are alike. (The clip in India about halfway through is great.) And check out his site.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

His FAQ is very interesting - here's an answer about the song in the video, an ancient tribal chant recorded by UNESCO almost 40 years ago that his friend put music behind:
What’s the deal with the girl singing?

The girl you hear singing is named Afunakwa. She comes from a place named Fataleka in the Solomon Islands. The song she is singing is a traditional lullaby named “Rorogwela.” The recording was made in 1970 by a UNESCO ethnomusicologist named Hugo Zemp.

Boy...that was a lot of names.

”Rorogwela” is part of the oral tradition among the Baegu tribe, passed down through generations for who-knows-how-long, and was thankfully preserved while there were members of the tribe who could still sing it.

The song is now a part of the internet video tradition among computer geeks, and is passed through high-bandwidth fiber optic cable to who-knows-where a bajillion times a day.

I find this to be nifty.

No one seems to know if Afunakwa is still alive. If she is, I would very much like to meet her someday.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow did you see the crabs on that beach in Australia? Beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Haha I've watched it 3 times now. It's great.

Anonymous said...

Do you notice in the very first scene there is a goat just standing casually on top of a motorcycle!

Anonymous said...

How cute is the dog jumping and dancing in the Kuwait clip. Did anyone even see that???

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