The idea for this album arose from “Waltz for Matilda”, a track from my last album, “From Out of My Music Box”. “Waltz for Matilda” was a jazz rearrangement of the Australian unofficial anthem, “Waltzing Matilda”. As it happened, this proved to be one of the most popular of the tracks and it got me thinking whether I might be able to repeat the trick with other popular anthems.
My first foray into arranging other alternatives was with three anthems popular in England: “I Vow to Thee my Country”, “Jerusalem”, and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”, which appear on the album as “I Yearn for Thee” (track 5), “Those Ancient Feet in Three Time” (track 10), and “The Gospel According to Abdullah” (track 11). Like “Waltzing Matilda” these three anthems can take on the role as an unofficial national anthem as they are often sung at national sporting events.
I then started looking around for other such unofficial national anthems from other countries, one such being the popular Irish ballade, “The Rose of Tralee”, which appears as track 7: “The Thorns of Tralee”.
It then occurred to me that I might also try my hand at official national anthems (excluding obvious dirges such as “God Save the King”), if there were no obvious popular unofficial anthems available. As it turned out, the majority of tracks are either direct rearrangements of official anthems or derivatives of some material within the official anthem.
Direct rearrangements of offical anthems include: Track 1: “Star Spangled Banner” as a Latin “Samba Estralado”; Track 3: the Russian “Life Has Become Better” as a jazz waltz; Track 4: The French “La Marseillaise” as a ballade, “Un Hymne de Paix”; Track 6: The Austro-Hungarian “Gott Erhalte Franz den Kaiser” as a funk piece, “Pappa’s Last Song”; and Track 9: The Israeli “Hatikva” as an Arabised klezmer-like piece, “Let’s all Dance Together”.
Derivatives of some material within the official anthem include: Track 2: The Chinese “March of the Volunteers” as an African feel calypso, “Twinkle Twinkle Red Star”, and Track 8: The Japanese “Kimigayo” as a Dorian/Mixolydian modal blues piece, “Haiku”.
Rearrangement of popular, but especially national anthems is potentially fraught with risk of offence, as such anthems may be heavily emotionally charged and of high geopolitical significance. As the arrangements were gradually assembled, this geopolitical aspect became more explicit in the way that the collection of tracks has been organised, and indeed in the choice of transformation for a particular anthem.
Thus, the first five tracks correspond to the “Big Five” on the UN Security Council, followed by track 6 of Austro-Hungarian/German origin.
Tracks 7 and 8 make a pair because both Irish and Japanese music make much use of the flute, and it was an Irishman, William Fenton, who composed the first Japanese official anthem (later modified)!
The last three also make a set as all are either directly or indirectly linked to the Holy Land.
If any offence is caused by the music, it is unintentional. Collectively, the 11 tracks make connections between a large proportion of the globe, and it certainly is intended that it should give a message of unity and peace between peoples of the world, hence the album title, “Songs from Pangaea Proxima”.
The album has been enormous fun to make, both in terms of the composition and in the performance, clearly reflected in the recording.
