While we’re on the subject of music, Fi Glover at BBC Radio 4 has a nice little feature on called Inheritance Tracks.
The idea is to tell the story of two songs – one which you have inherited from your parents and the other being the one that you would leave to the next generation. Plenty of examples are given from people like novelist Fay Weldon and comic Mark Thomas and includes music from Flanders & Swann, Joyce Grenfell and Dave Brubeck.
Oh, this one is a winner. The music that shaped us and songs for the next generation. What is the song that you think your parents have left to you, and the one that you would leave to the next generation? What do your choices say about you? Makes a change from the same old Friday iPod showoff list.
I’ll set the ball rolling, shall I?
It was difficult to nominate just one song that I’ve inherited. Holst or Sinatra? Queen or Nana Mouskouri? Bernard Cribbins or Art Blakey? All were typical of my parents taste. In the end I just had to choose ‘Firefly’ by Tony Bennett – they always used to sing it together at drunken Irish family parties in the very long ago. Tony Bennett is also a musician whose sheer longevity has made him an integral part of the soundscape of that apparently innocent era after the war and Before The Bushes, when Dacron was cool and we all wore leisure suits, even the babies – you’ve only to hear his voice to be transported to a hipper, smoother, less angsty time.
I was torn over which to bequeath to my kids. My first inclination was of course to nomnate ‘The Internationale’, for obvious reasons. But ‘The Internationale’ has one big drawback, ie you can’t dance to it. And that’s a revolution if we can’t dance? So I nominate Funkadelic and “One Nation Under A Groove” for my kids to inherit, because it embodies my generation’s demented utopian dreams of worldwide love, harmony, understanding and all-round funkiness in one irresistable song.
What are your own two inheritance tracks?
Read more: Music, Radio 4, Inheritance tracks
