ok i just have to say that someone is singing the blues in swedish in my living room right now...on a keyboard bought by my late grandfather back in 1993 or so.
Tapping his socked foot, dressed in a blue embroidered shirt surely from his travels, my finnish friend sings...."swedish word, swedish word....etc....blues....". Too bad I can't translate for you...writing "swedish word" does not quite capture it...
now we've moved from blues to a more classic sound...the song from which he sang some verses the other day as our good night greeting -- after we'd all eaten the chocolate cake my sister had for me. My sis, my Finnish friend, an American high school librarian from Washington State, and another librarian from Brooklyn who were all staying with me all sang happy birthday to me at midnight after a long day of the US Social Forum...
the song was from the most famous Swedish who wrote many popular songs...this one is not heard as often as the words are sad...well not so sad as hard, black -- it's a song sung in the attic and it is for people who are -- that's one very old profession, you know, when you take the, clean the chimney -- yes, a chimneysweep. It is a drinking song. Skol is cheers. Skol, yeah. Cheers -- what you say when you toast. A toast for all you brothers. Then it tells some hard truths about money and man. Eveybody is as ugly...and talks about the deluge, the flood -- in the Biblical sense.
It ends with a toast for life.
The first song was about an oil tanker, named Gramsci. You know Antonio Gramsci? I wrote my masters thesis about Antonio Gramsci.
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