Il N'y A Pas De Quoi -- The New Single!
IL N'Y A PAS DE QUOI
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
Il N'y A Pas De Quoi*snippet full-length!*(pronounced "Ill Knee Uh Pa Duh Kwa") The primary season has barely begun Il n’y a pas de quoi
Il n’y a pas de quoi… “I never had sex with her,” did the President swear, Il n’y a pas de quoi… Now, language is funny, and English is worse. Il n’y a pas de quoi… Now Alfred E. Neumann’s publication is MAD. I know there’s a theme here, but I’m never too sure Il n’y a pas de quoi… Lyrics and sound recordings © 2003 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, retransmission, or performance without permission is a violation of copyright law. Permission is granted for downloading and personal listening on the original user's personal computer or listening device. |
"Il N'y A Pas De Quoi" was originally inspired by the title expression which my flamboyent wife Carol tosses off from time to time. It is virtually untranslatable literally, but colloquially it means "it's nothing," or as we might say, "no problem!" I thought it would make a good song. The next problem is what to write about. This was back in March of 2004 and I was frustrated by the fact that John Kerry had all but locked up the Democratic nomination months before the Oregon primary. (I actually live across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington, but spent most of my life in Portland.) I began to think about other meaningless or inane exercises which because of human or technical foibles strain our faith in the democratic process. The choice of Zydeco for the musical style was a natural one because many Cajun songs are partly or entirely in French. This of course is no accident since the Cajuns were French Canadians who migrated to Louisiana. I had great fun listening to Buckwheat Zydeco, Beausoleil, Wayne Toups and others to get the feel of the music. ("Cajun" is a compression of "Acadian," and Acadia is the original name of Nova Scotia. When the French Acadians were evicted by the English in 1755 and migrated south, the area some of them settled in Louisiana became known as the Acadian Coast.) This is my first bilingual song. Each of the French phrases in the chorus is immediately translated, abeit loosely. Il est tout sans souci literally means "It is all without concern," and C’est toute la même chose is "It's all the same thing". My actual French training is limited to 3 weeks of summer camp, so if I've gotten the idiom wrong, I'd be interested in hearing about it. My songwriting has recently taken a turn towards the topical. The songwriting process for many of these often becomes an amazing learning exercise and intellectual journey. The next song on the single, "Clear And Present Danger," is perhaps the most remarkable example of this. After some soul-searching, I've decided that I have something to say, and I ought to say it. I want to say something with my songs, not just write something catchy. |
Clear and Present Dangersnippet radio edit! extended version!He told me that his family name was Walker. I met him in a cell in Kabul prison, He told me that his middle name was Walker. I told him we should bust out of this rat hole, He told me that his middle name was Walker.
Lyrics and sound recordings © 2003 Douglas J. Westberg. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, retransmission, or performance without permission is a violation of copyright law. Permission is granted for downloading and personal listening on the original user's personal computer or listening device. |
This song began with the lines, "He told me that his family name was Walker/He said he used to be a Texas Ranger...He told me that his middle name was Walker/He said he used to own the Texas Rangers," referring of course to fictional Cordell Walker and President George Walker Bush. I thought it was a cool coincidence and a great idea for a song. That the middle name of the unfortunate soul alluded to in the fourth and fifth verses* also happened to be Walker was an astonishing piece of serendipity and gives the song a marvelous symmetry. *[John Walker Lindh] BBC America 1/24/02 As I said above, many of my songs have become wonderful learning exercises. The research for this song involved, for one thing, a survey of notorious prisons around the world as I strove to complete the line, "I met him in a cell in _____ prison." (The song could have ended up being set in Cambodia!) The line came to me, "We'd recite The Prisoner Of Zenda word for word." A cute and apt reference, I hoped. As I researched the book and the movie (there are at least 3 versions) I was astonished to find that, fortuitously, the star of one of the versions gave me another rhyme with "ranger," a rhyme which I ended up carrying through the entire song. There is a certain ambiguity, which I am loathe to resolve, about the political stance of the lyric as well as who the "he" of the song is. Is "he" one person or several? This was the subject of hot debate among my school-age daughters as I wrote this song. Is the writer being literal or ironic? Remember that the narrator of the lyric is not necessarily the same person as the writer and does not necessarily share the same world-view. Steely Dan's Donald Fagen loves to pose as a beautiful loser ("What A Shame About Me," "Bad Sneakers," "Deacon Blues") but the guy himself is undoubtedly a millionaire. In my research, I learned that ancient Babylon stood just a few miles from present-day Baghdad, and that Alexander the Great conquered it in 331 B.C. I tentatively had "While Basra girls walk miles to fill their gourds..." and had a bit of a challenge checking the accuracy of that. I was remembering the story of the water plant at Basra being knocked out in the early stages of the invasion of Iraq and the women having to walk to a well 3 miles out of town to fetch water. I finally found a story that reported the women and children were fetching water in old plastic milk jugs and gasoline cans. I remembered the next-to-last line of the song, a reference of course to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", after I had the song almost completely written, and the way the line scanned and fit seamlessly into the structure of the lyric, to say nothing of the wondrous irony with which it resonates with the rest of the song, was another remarkable piece of serendipity.
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