Dear Readers,
One thing that I find fascinating in the records that Augury pulls are the songs and poems that come from different cultures. I also find them colossally difficult to translate, since a song is rather influenced by cultural norms. I posted on that specific topic a little while ago.
Still, I feel like you will all miss out on a big part of my work if I fail to provide translated poetry and songs here, and so I plan to do this, starting today. Just bear with me if the translation seems a little strange.
Today's continues last week's Martian colonization theme, but this time it's a folk song from the Martian Colonies. Folk music is somewhat interesting; in your time stream, contemporary to you, it is essentially a "style" of professionally produced music and no longer what it originally was. That is to say, where it once was an organic genre that developed from analog instruments around campfires, it is in your time the realm of professionals.
This is important to note because that will change in these Martian colonies. Ready access to media is what makes you seek out professionals for even folk music. But the early Mars colonies will not have easy access to Earth's media, due to infrastructure outages and other problems. Therefore, they will begin to develop their own folk music, much as soldiers of WWII developed folk music when they could not get radio access.
Like those soldiers, however, the Martian colonists will have a long tradition of 20th Century music on which to base their folk traditions. Songs written in the chaos of Martian dust storms will rise from the rock classic earworms that defined the colonists' parents' generation. Like the one partially translated below. You should recognize the original song, but this version has a much more bitter twinge. It was written, as far as I can tell, to record the plight of the vertical farmers in the early colonies.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Deparment of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
"Olympus City"
Chorus (x2)
Take me home from Olympus City
Where the grass is dead
And the girls too skinny
Take me home (oh won't you please take me home)
Just a farmer livin' under the dome
Growin' soybeans in styro-foam
The beggars ask,
"So give me something to eat"
I'll feed you at another time
Get[yerass] back down in the mine
Rags to riches
Or so they said
We'll just
keep pushin' for our daily bread slice
You know it's, it's all a gamble
On cold Martian Ice
Everybody tryin' to breathe
Chorus (x2)
No comments:
Post a Comment