The Blog Less Traveled

Last night I was watching the movie, The Constant Gardener, for the second time. Normally, I just turn a DVD off when the video ends, but this time I let the credits start rolling. When I did, a most amazing song started playing. The song title is Kothbiro by a gentleman named Ayub Ogada.

Ayub Ogada is a Kenyan musician. In addition to his singing, he also plays an African stringed instrument called the nyatiti. Although this song came out on The Constant Gardener soundtrack in 2005, the song was actually recorded on his album, En Mana Kuoyo, which he recorded back in 1993. He’s also collaborated on several other songs with Susheela Raman and the Afro Celt Sound System.

Maybe I’ve been watching too many “Chick” flicks with my wife and daughter lately, but I really like the melody and lyrics of this song. You wouldn’t guess it from the melody, but the song is about cattle herding. The word Kothbiro translates roughly into English as “Rain is Coming”. Although sung in his natural tongue, the English translation is below:

Auma do you hear what I say
The rain is on its way
Return our cattle home
Yaye the children
What is it that you think you do?
The rain is on its way
Return our cattle home.

If you’d like to listen to the song, there’s a video on YouTube made by an individual from Argentina that used this song as the soundtrack. Click here.

If you’d like more information on Ayub Ogada, click here.

Definitely worth a listen.

I’d like to think that I have a fairly wide range of musical tastes. Everything from Hard Rock to Classical and anything in between. At one time, I actually owned a record collection of almost 900 LP albums. With moving around the country so much, it became a real hassle to constantly box them up and lug them around. Those babies were heavy! I eventually sold them all and then created a new collection of over 400 CDs. With the advent of MP3 players and iTunes, my CD collection has pretty much stopped growing. I’ve converted all my CDs to digital music files and now have a collection of about 6500 songs on my computer. It’s nice being able to create tailored playlists and download them to my iPods.

Anyway, I thought I’d start a little section on the blog dedicated to music. I’m going to pick a group and song that I like, give a little background on it, and include a video link, if there is one. If you have a song that you’d like to see included here, let me know. I’ll give it a spin. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, I officially start the Music category.

My first selection is the song, Far Away, by Nickelback. This group hails from Canada and has been around since 1995. The song is from their fifth album, All the Right Reasons. It’s their latest album and it was released back in 2005. This album is not a one-hit album. It contains many excellent songs such as If Everyone Cared, Savin’ Me, Photograph, and Next Contestant. This is their best album, IMHO, and I highly recommend it.

Click here to view the video. BTW, this is a nicely done video. It doesn’t go overboard with a lot of high-tech video effects. It’s a nice story centered around a fireman and it has a somewhat surprising ending. I think it’s worth 4-5 minutes of your time.

Click here for more information on Nickelback.