From “My Land is Your Land (W. Guthrie) to “Ó Gente da Minha Terra” (Mariza) to “My Land and My People” ( Dalai Lama)

 

 

 

I enjoy listening to songs or classical music while driving more than I do in a house room or at the concert hall. So many variables interact at the same time when I insert a CD into the dashboard – the scenery keeps changing, the wind whistles differently depending on how much I crack the windows open, the sound of the road constantly changes under the tires, and I suddenly sound like a perfect tenor when I join the song!

So, I keep a multi-lingual selection of CDs in my car. I have Italian opera, French troubadour songs, Portuguese Fado, Arabic folkloric songs, Armenian popular songs, and Spanish classic guitar plays. Recently I added the CD of Silk Road music by Yo-Yo Ma.

When I have a few hours of drive (even an hour), I decide on the CD according to my mood at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago, when I had a drive to the upper country of Arizona (meaning in the mountains of an altitude of about 7,000 feet) I decided to fill the thinning air with the vibrations of Fado.

Fado is a typically Portuguese genre of “blues” that has its origins in port districts like Mouraria and Bairro Alto. Lisbon is where it blossomed in the 19^th century and today the best Fado moments are still to be found in the “semi-dark ” bars in Bairro Alto where I had my introduction to the often soul wrenching songs and the 12 steel  strings guitarra.  I can still recall Tasca Do Chico and Café Luso.  I have written about my early experience here https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4995164429340748464/5769353108438927210 with B&W photos of a fadista.

So, the CD I have is called FADO: um tesouro português. I immediately chose Gaivota by Amália Rodrigues and Ó Gente da Minha Terra by Mariza. La grande dame of Fado is incomparable to any other fadista and she remains the ambassador of my memories of Portugal. But Mariza, for whom the above song was composed by T. Machado based on a text by A. Rodrigues, takes me beyond Portugal, to all the countries where people remember their land and ancestors or celebrate them if they are lucky to still live in these ancestral places.

Here are a few lines:

Oh people of my land

Now I understand

This sadness which I carry on

Was from you that I received

… I was now driving in the high mountains still their tops covered in snow. Suddenly the desert was transformed into Nordic scenery. It is a beautiful land. I felt humbled and lucky to live my days in this context.

And without warning, I started whistling the notes of the most popular American folksong by Woody Guthrie “This Land is Your Land”. While celebrating the grandeur of this land, this song has raised historical, cultural and social issues in a country that is three centuries old. This land has seen different cultures call it their own over this time period. And yet, it remains a land with much space for all.

Here are a few lines:

I roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me a voice was sounding
this land was made for you and me

 Every country has a poem, a song and especially an anthem celebrating its motherland. Or is it fatherland? Or yet homeland? And these expressions of love and belonging are often precipitated when the land is in danger, through physical or cultural invasion.

Fatherland seems to be the oldest term used in English language to describe one’s country. It may be derived from the Latin patria, meaning fatherland.

Motherland may have its origins in the French language as terre mère. Although now the French use “la mère patrie” somehow mixing between motherland and fatherland.

Homeland does not refer to the land of my mothers or fathers, but rather the land where I belong. It is perhaps a reflection of the global movement of people and the globe being truly globalized. … As I was thinking about Russia being Motherland yet surrounded at its south by Nordic countries where their land is called Fatherland, I remembered the lines by a famous Armenian poet Silva Kabudikyan. In a poem to her son, she says:

And son, no matter where you go

Or under the moon wherever you stay

Even if you forget your mother

Never forget your mother tongue

(the translation is mine)

 Could it be that she was also addressing the movement during 1920 to the 1940s of Armenians leaving the “Motherland”? Indeed, today’s Diaspora of 5 million Armenians took shape during those years. If so, did she recognize that identity can survive through the preservation of language and culture even if one is not on his motherland or fatherland?

Perhaps the one who has given much thought to all this is the four-year-old son of a humble farmer sat on a huge, gilded throne in the Himalayan city of Lhasa. Then, in exile as a young man, he is declared the reincarnated leader of Tibet. Now the most recognized monk in world history, the Dalai Lama tells his story and the story of Central Tibet in his book “My Land and My People” while China classifies Tibet as part of the Motherland.

 

… I drove to the upper country of Arizona a few weeks ago. I did not write any of these thoughts on paper (or on the screen) as I did not further explore the ways in which our understanding of “my land” has a long history in national identity. 

But a few days ago, when I was walking with my dog (not “walking my dog” as he is truly an independent soul!) we came across a spot in the rocky hills where someone had camped not long ago. And in the fire pit, I saw the partly burned tree trunk that had a pristine bird nest on it! The sun being still in the East, the shadows drew a perfectly sad face at one end of the trunk. And leaves near the bird nest seemed like fingers protecting the nest.

I could not resist thinking about Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and FADO songs! So, I looked for the definition of a nation used during the debates between the British and Gandhi’s India:

“a nation is a body of people, associated with a particular territory, which is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly of its own.”

So, now I could write these lines.

 

PS/ here is the photo original size

here is a close up of the nest:

 

And the face with so much sorrow:

 

 

March 22, 2021

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021