The choral passage in Hello Earth

[Jon-Terje Lilleby <jtli@sn.no>]

Hello everybody,

A while back someone posted an article about the men's choral passage in Hello
Earth. It was identified as a traditional Georgian song, I think ( I haven't
got the
original post. Were are the archives nowadays anyway? ftp.uu.net has not been
updated in ages.). Well, anyway, I recently received information from a former
Georgian citizen that will allow me to elaborate further on the subject:

As we know the choral passage is not credited on the Hounds Of Love album, but
Werner Herzog gets a "thank you". Kate borrowed the tune from his film
"Nosferatu". If I remember correctly the passage was not credited on this film
either and Kate was not able to locate the original source. In an interview
(1991,
Classic Albums) she explains how the choral passage on Hello Earth was created:
"... we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like
what I
could hear was happening on the original."  

According to my Georgian source the choral passage is a traditional song from
the Kartli-Kakhetian province in east Georgia. The song is called
"Tsintskaro" (At
The Spring). The lyrics to the song roughly translates to

  At the spring young man is passing by, 
  There a beautiful woman bearing a jug,
  As he speaks at the merest word,
  She gets shy 
  Another word and she departs
  At the spring young man is passing by...

I don't know if this is supposed to be sung by the male choir or is in some
part of
the song that Kate left out. I leave it to the experts to dwell deeper into
the topic...


Bye,

Jon-Terje Lilleby
jonl@ifi.uio.no
jtli@sn.no
http://www.ifi.uio.no/~jonl/kbindex.html