A Musical Tour of the World: All Countries A-Z One Per Day

Replying to the general conversation as well as your post, I will admit that on a world scale I'm privileged concerning internet and power. I have probably already gone through gigabytes of download sampling music from different countries and playing songs on this thread.

Venezuela sounds an interesting place to be. But, alphabetically, it's a long way ahead in this thread.

 

Today's country is Australia.

First, there's one inevitable track that would be conspicuous by its absence. So, I post it here:



A more serious track, and in my opinion a better one that never had any plagiarism claims, that makes Australia its main subject is Great Southern Land by Icehouse. I'm not sure how well known this track is.

Great Southern Land

Icehouse became more or less the project of Iva Davies. Initially the band was called Flowers and released an album called Icehouse (with an IMHO great title track.) But, there was already a band called Flowers in the USA so they needed a new name. The solution they came up with was to swap the name of the band with the name of the album and hey, presto!

Note that I was born and grew up in New Zealand. There was a close relationship between the music scenes in New Zealand and Australia and the band was an immediate hit in New Zealand. I saw the band play live very early on in its career at a music festival in New Zealand and bought their first two albums. From the third album on I felt that the quality of songs went down and I wasn't so interested.

 

I'm going to be greedy and post a second track by the band called Yothu Yindi comprised mainly of Australian Aboriginals. This band mixed traditional Aboriginal culture into mainly western music, and used the music to publicise issues faced by the Aboriginal population in Australia. Here's one of their best known songs 'Treaty'.



The name of the band means 'Child and Mother' in the Yolngu language.

One very unfortunate way that the band has publicised Aboriginal issues is that a number of its members have died before their time. The lead singer M Yunupingu died of kidney failure exacerbated by diabetes and other health issues. The keyboardist and singer G Yunupingu, who had his own solo career, also died of kidney and liver failure. Note that I'm not giving their full names as (I believe) that it's traditional society to not use the full name of those who have passed on. This is a musical forum not a political one, but I'll link to one song by G Yunupingu, and then to an article discussing his death.

G Yunupingu - Djarimirri

Dr G Yunupingu died a needless death after a life of inhuman treatment. We must work harder to close the gap.

Note that we're getting near the end of the A's. Once we get there I'll post the updated list of countries and regions with distinctive culture that we plan to cover. I've added Okinawa to the list and made some changes recommended by others.

 

Johnny Be Good was but one of the first international tracks in the early 80's successfully introduced here in Brasil as a video-clip by the MTV fashion, a trend of pretty long standing around the globe by the way. But my favourite song by Men at Work has always been "It's A Mistake", by far.

Midnight Oil is another band that had some popularity in my country. Contrarily though, Icehouse had so few airplay here that it remained quite obscure, alas.

 

Unbelievable that it's only one of 407 Australian languages that are estimated to exist, even though only 13 or so groups of them are still "strong"...

Surprised to acknowledge on that article too that Dr. G Yunupingu was chosen to sing at Queen of England's 2012 Diamond Jubilee concert in London.

 

This is my favourite Midnight Oil track. I hope you weren't about to post the same one

In the Royal Variety Performances there has often been a good choice of music from Commonwealth countries. Not that I'm comfortable with the history of British colonialism.

 

Got to include this for Australia, it was even voted the best song of the country. The song is Friday On My Mind by The Easybeats, our own Beatles. Of course there's a lot of great music from Australia.

 

Icehouse had a significant hit with "Hey, Little Girl" in my country The Netherlands in 1982. I saw them opening for David Bowie during the latter's Serious Moonlight tour. As Bowie's hit single Let's Dance had a video set in Australia, perhaps that was the reason for inviting Icehouse to open for him? Probably too far-fetched.


In the seventies, the Little River Band had quite some success with hits like "It's A Long Way There" and especially "Help Is On Its Way" and "Home On Monday" from the brilliant album "Diamantina Cocktail".
Home On Monday - Little River Band

But my favourite Australian artist will always be Nick Cave. I saw him with The Bad Seeds at a music festival in 2005 in The Netherlands. Fantastic show. At the same time, on the main stage, the Foo Fighters were playing, but after a while more and more people came to see Nick as his concert was really something special. "Where The Wild Roses Grow" with Kylie Minogue from the superb album "Murder Ballads" (what a great title!) is one of my favourites.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Where The Wild Roses Grow (Live at Koko) ft. Kylie Minogue

 

I don't know them enough not even to make a 5 songs compilation, to be honest, but judging only by its song title this would be an enduring favourite :

Midnight Oil - Surf's Up Tonight

 

Great choice, IMHO.

That's another band I've seen live at a New Zealand music festival. That was early on in their career before they started losing members and eventually became a band famous for not having any original members left nor any of the songwriters who wrote the songs they are famous for.

 

Right on, not only its title is great.

 

I love this song! Obviously very well known. Maybe you can share some of your other favourites from the wealth of Austrialian music? Preferably of little known acts outside the country?

 

I think that when someone's home country is being discussed, that they should have carte blanche to post loads

 

Aleph is one Australian band that I truly love. Only one album, released in 1977, called Surface Tension.

 

Jon Lord with Hoochie Coochie Men (ft. Jimmy Barnes) - When a Blind Man Cries

 

Those Antipodean boys and girls are always good for a bit of shouty, and that's what I'll link today:



Mammal, a band that broke through around 2006. Led by the maverick figure of Ezekiel Ox: musician, political activist and a whole lot more besides. A couple of their tracks earned regular play on the major music channels, which is where I came across them as I spent 'the majority' of 2007 in Australia. Highly energetic, rarely dull and typically short-lived, they had detonated by 2009: "Due to long standing personal, political, musical and business differences, Mammal has decided it cannot continue and is no more...". The subtext is that the Ox is probably a bloody difficult bloke to work with!

Fun band though, and they reformed recently. Also helped to herald a wave of modern rock/punk imitators, there seems to be quite a healthy scene in Oz and a number of decent acts of that nature.

Dean Ray - Bette Davis Eyes
This is the first, and hopefully last, time I will reference a talent show on these venerable forums. Came across this video by chance a few years ago: Australian X-Factor contestant Dean Ray. There's a full version of the audition available, but I just appreciate this guy's feel for the music.

So nothing too obscure from me here.

 

Australia is a country that has a vast array of popular and obscure music, so there may be a lot of response compared to some other countries.

Warumpi Band is probably pretty obscure outside of Australia, but I'm not sure how popular they were there. Some of the members were Aborigines. This song about Elcho Island. It's kind of weird that it was written by the guitarist, but about the singers homeland.

Warumpi Band- "My Island Home"

 

Thanks for the songs, everyone.

Today's country is Austria. Austria has a long history of music, being the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, among many others. I visited Vienna a number of years ago, and it's a place steeped in history.

The music scene appears vibrant there. But, for my first Austrian song I'm going to go for a big hit from my youth: Der Kommissar by Falco. I believe that the cover version by the band After the Fire was better known in the USA.



Falco also had hits with songs such as Rock me Amadeus, and Vienna Calling. I didn't realise that he died in a car accident in 1998.

There is plenty of new music from Austria that I found in research. I've quite enjoyed the music I've found by sampling artist Parov Stelar, whose work includes some 'Electro-swing' whereby sampling is used to place music from the 1920s in a new, and danceable context. His track Booty Swing shows this, but I also have enjoyed his more general sampling-based music such as Love Part 1.

I found loads of songs, so aren't expecting everyone reading this thread to listen to all of them. But, I'll list a few with description and people can pick and choose what they listen to. Here's a great, in my opinion, hip-hop-ish song Texta ft. Attwenger - (so schnö kaust gor net) schaun. And being extra greedy this song Libertatia by Ja, Panik. A multi-talented band who have released catchy indie style music, and their own cookbook.

As one last reference to the longer musical history of Austria, here's the Vienna Boys Choir.

 

Until well into the 20th Century, Austria was a major center of avant-garde culture Just look at some of the composers of classical music it has given us. Besides Mozart which you mentioned, we have Franz Schubert, Joseph Haydn, Anton Bruckner, Johann Strauss sr. and jr., Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler, and then I am not even counting the ones born in Hungary when it was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. It also brought forth some very famous conductors (Herbert von Karajan, Erich and Carlos Kleiber, Karl Bohm. And in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra one of ten best Orchestras in the world. Not bad for a fairly small country.

Every year on New Year's Day, Austria and its rich musical heritage is in the spotlight with the famous Neujahrskonzert, performed by the VPO, which is being live broadcast and watched by millions globally as the best possible cure for a hangover.


And then there is, on the opposite spectrum, Conchita Wurst, who won the Eurovision song contest in 2014, breaking barriers or LGBT and inspiring drag queens all over the world
Conchita Wurst - Rise Like A Phoenix (Austria) 2014 Eurovision Song Contest

 

Besides the Vienna Boys Choir, as far as I'm aware there have always been several other musical events to enjoy in Vienna, for example the concerts at the Vienna State Opera are among the most prestigious ones. Also, not long ago my wife and I enjoyed a live broadcast of two very beautiful Christmas Shows (one for each year of course) by Andre Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra, in Vienna. Well, for some reason judging by what I watched on TV most of the public on the two events were mostly on the opposite spectrum of those who mostly attend ACDC gigs ... ha ha ha!

Andre Rieu is Dutch, he doesn't fit on here today but, IIRC, I heard him opening those two Christmas concerts with an excerpt of Bruckner's Symphony No.4 intro (well, just on the first bars of that opening), one of my favourite symphonies by this great Austrian composer. I suppose that @Jamesterdammer might know well Andre Rieu and correct me if I'm wrong:

 

I thought there might be a fair amount of classical music today.

During my short trip to Vienna, I heard the organ being played in St Stephen's Cathedral. But, I wasn't excessively impressed. However, on doing a bit of googling, it appears that the organ has been rebuilt or something. So, it might sound a lot better now - if it's being played given the current situation - than it did a few years ago. VIenna'S New CAthedral Organ The proper organ has been shut down since 1991, and would have been shut down when I was there.

In terms of Dutch violinists playing Austrian composed music - I think if we take too strict a view of what represents a country, that we'll limit ourselves too much. We've had Jon Lord in Australia up above! It's all good.

EDIT: Here's the organ in St Stephen's Cathedral being played in 1977. This sounds a lot more impressive than what I heard when I was there.

 

Well, there's a long way to go until we hit countries starting with "N", so I guess HitAndRun will not object too loudly. André Rieu must be credited with opening up classical music for a whole new audience of people who would not normally listen to it. He managed this by bringing in a lot of show elements and allow the audience to clap or sing along with some of the pieces, thereby lowering the threshold for people who think classical music is very serious. The only problem is that there are now many people who think that he composed all those beautiful pieces of music.

 

Michael Mantler, who combines classical, jazz and avant-guard, worth mentioning. I'm not familiar w/ many of his works, but all those I've heard I find interesting enough to keep in the collection. Here is his track called 13, taken from the album 13 & 3/4, which is a collaboration w/ Carla Bley.

 

Yeah an interesting thrilling atmosphere that even feels like for a suspense movie .

 

Joe Zawinul, founder of Weather Report.