I give you fair warning! This is about as daft as a blog gets. And, no! Don’t bother to do a Google translate – the words don’t mean a thing. They sort of evolved.
Let me explain …
Now that I have a lot more leisure time (which does translate into ‘busy most of the time’), I find that I have time to think of the more abstruse trivia. Especially when I am driving along a road that I have driven 100s of times over the past few years. On a nice day, light traffic, and the glories of Autumn not quite there yet, I was able to contemplate on other (and odder) things.
I had recently read an article about an old guy in Thailand (or could be Cambodia or Laos) who was one of the last masters of singing in the local dialect. Western music, with its fixed, formal scales does not go well with many oriental languages which are often tone-based. One word can have many meanings, dependant on how you vary the intonation as you say it. Western music would strait-jacket the meanings, and ruin the old songs. In the article, they did admit that the old songs were far from musical (by our standards), but they liked them, and they were preserving the old ways.
Which got me to thinking. And as I was alone in the car, and mildly bored, I started to wonder just what those old songs might sound like. My oriental language skills were largely derived from watching old John Wayne war films, so by any standard, not very good. But hey! I was alone in the car, and no-one would hear me.
Cobbling up a few pseudo-oriental words, and singing them out (loudly) with any tone of my choice, and varying the tone several times in the course of the one word, got me started.
“Wa” ended up sounding like Wa-ee-aa-oo-aa. Tricky to do on a very short one-syllable word. I tried lots of variations. Nothing definitive as yet.
Add “Li” (pronounced ‘lee’, or in my case ‘Lee-ah-ee’) seemed like a suitable faux-orientaux addition to my song.
Add in “Ho” (I didn’t think it needed a lot of tone warbling) and another “Wah” (more drawn out this time) and I definitely felt that I was getting somewhere. What else could I add? I came up with “Chuong” – very Chinese looking (though probably not Chinese sounding!) and I had a verse. With all the tonal variations, I reckoned that I only needed the one line, rather than the many of the typical simplistic Occidental ballad.
With a few minutes of loud and erratic practice, as I drove along (with the windows firmly closed on the car), I was really beginning to feel that I was on to something. With a load of nonsensical fake words, and the machine gun barrage of off-key notes, I was creating original, different, and oddly appealing music.
Wa-Li Ho Wah Chuong!
A few words but a rich medley of sounds. Random at first, but gradually, it settled down to the right tone in the right place. I could sing it to you now, but then, you had to be there at the time, to appreciate it. I mentioned all this to the wife, but she made it clear in that non-verbal but absolute way she has, that she did not really need to enjoy my new and wonderful creation. Sad!
But (and I say this with a few cautionary words), if you find yourself alone in your car, mildly bored and with time to waste, you may wish to create your own mock-oriental symphony. You may try ‘Wa-Li Ho Wah Chuong’ or you may produce your own words. It is fun, and you never know – this may be the beginning of a new musical era.
If you wish to entertain your friends with your new pastime, then I might suggest that you wait until you are not driving the car, as this would be inadvisable with the consumed quantity of alcoholic beverage needed for true appreciation.
I would like to finish with our new tachras anthem.
Wa-Li Ho Wah Chuong!
Thank you and good-night.
Mesklin