As the countdown to the World Cup in Germany intensifies, spare a thought for Trinidad and Tobago. In a country where football is followed with a religious passion, the search for an official World Cup song took on huge significance. A competition to find a rallying anthem for T&T’s Soca Warriors was won by a song called
Goal in dey Pooney that, translating roughly to
Goal in your Vagina, did not find favour with the Football Federation. So the rights to the anthem were sold abroad.
Soca Warriors by the Trinidad and Tobago Soca Boys (sample line: “Watch yow asses Englan’!”) may have a certain uplifting charm, but two men from Leeds wrote it. Its singer Patrick Beggs is Trinidadian — but he lives in Bradford.
A World Cup anthem says a lot about the country it comes from. This year’s England song, World at your Feet by Embrace, has been criticised for many things — failing to mention football in any way whatsoever is one — but at least Embrace do actually come from England, as do Sham 69 (Hurry Up England), Justin Hawkins of the Darkness (England) and the hundreds of other bands and artists currently cashing in on the World Cup. And Embrace have disgraced themselves less than most, turning in an unremarkable piece of flag-waving indie rock that is free from terrace chants or rapping footballers.
“We’re currently buried under a mountain of appalling football songs,” says Nick Moore, of the football magazine Four Four Two. “The fact that they are so bad is a sign that we don’t take them seriously at all, which is a strange situation given that this country has such a strong tradition in both pop music and football. Under these circumstances I don’t think Embrace have done too badly.”
The choice of the rather wishy-washy World at your Feet is part of a deliberate ploy by Fifa to tone down the xenophobia which international matches can encourage. With quite hopeless optimism, Fifa has asked English fans not to sing songs that will offend their German hosts; the Dambusters theme tune and Ten German Bombers (sung to the tune of Ten Green Bottles) have been cited as particularly unwanted. It hasn’t quite gone as far as handing out lyric sheets for Noël Coward’s Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans on the England stands.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, no country links football closer to music than Brazil. There is no tradition of the terrible football anthem in Brazil; instead the country’s most respected and popular singers, including Jorge Ben Jor, Chico Buarque and Caetano Veloso, write deeply serious songs that extol the virtues of star players, the magic of football, and the general superiority of Brazilian legwork over everyone else’s.
“The links between football and music are so obvious that Brazil does not feel the need to have a national song,” says Alex Bellos, the author of Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life (Bloomsbury). “The word used to describe the swing of the hips of a brilliant footballer is jinga, which is also used to describe the elegance of a samba dancer. They’re one and the same.”
While many of the greatest Brazilian songs of the modern age are odes to football — Jorge Ben Jor’s Mas, Que Nada, Chico Buarque’s O Futebol are standards — a lot of Brazilian footballers have written songs and strangely, they are not that bad. The national team’s former coach Luiz Felipe Scolari wrote a song called Deita a Vida Me Leva (Let Life Take Me Away) that is played before the team go out on to the pitch, and even Pelé has a number of compositions to his credit.
“It’s not like he’s a brilliant songwriter,” says Bellos, “but like most of the Brazilian footballers, he has a feeling for music in a way that it’s impossible to imagine, say, Wayne Rooney having. That’s why musicians and footballers are such gods in Brazil — because they encapsulate the spirit that is at the heart of being Brazilian.”
Argentina and Brazil enjoy a relationship that has parallels with that of England and Germany, and nothing makes the Brazilians happier — apart from beating them in a game, of course — than when Argentina disgraces itself musically. The most famous Argentine football anthem so far is Udo Jürgen’s hit from 1978, Buenos Dias, Argentina. “Hello, Argentina!” sings Jurgen. “It’s taken a long time to get here, but not now I swivel my sombrero. Hello, I’m here!” Mas, Que Nada it isn’t.
In Africa the top musicians are always happy to do what they can to help the national teams. The great Youssou N’Dour wrote songs for the African Nations Cup, and for years the singer Soumaila Kanouté sang a song called Toumani for the Mali Eagles (the national football team) before every match. The compilation Africa Plays On (Because Music) features the Senegalese rappers Akon and Daara J encouraging their country to have the strength to face the world, while Cameroon’s Manu Dibango performs a song based on an advertisement for Puma shown across Africa called Welcome to Football. It isn’t surprising that Manu Dibango is a football fan: his 1974 hit Soul Makossa, one of the most successful pop songs to come out Africa, was originally a B-side to Cameroon’s 1974 World Cup anthem.
Elsewhere in the world, football anthems capture something of the national spirit too. Dour Teutonic determination was never more in evidence than on We Will Be Heroes by the punk band Die Toten Hosen, which was chosen as the official anthem for Germany’s 2002 World Cup effort. From the same year Japan’s official entry, Blaze, by Mondo Grosso, seemed almost Zen-like in its combination of poetic surrealism and practical advice: “If you want to light my heart,” go the lyrics, “use a candle, not a Bic.” The Swedish rapper Markoolio, meanwhile, got straight to the point with true Scandinavian efficiency: “We want goals, goals, goals, more goals. Be aware, here come more goals.”
The 2006 World Cup is being used as a way of forging greater understanding between countries. For the opening ceremony, the middle-aged German pop star and actor Herbert Gronemeyer will be joined by the blind Malian husband and wife duo Amadou and Mariam for a rendition of Germany’s own 2006 World Cup anthem, Celebrate the Day. It is an admirable pairing: few people outside of Mali had heard of Amadou and Mariam until last year and their heartfelt singing deserves the kind of audience that the World Cup will give them.
Perhaps all of this tasteful reaching out of hands across the ocean needs to be tempered by some old-fashioned German-baiting. Luckily Justin Hawkins, not a man known for subtlety, has come to the rescue with England, his contribution to our nation’s World Cup effort. His song praises the virtues of England over the tune of the German national anthem. “The whole point of the England World Cup song,” he says, “is to assert our national identity and talk about the achievements of a great nation. And to bash the Hun? It’s a national sport.”
Beginner’s Guide To World Music — World Cup Edition (Nascente Records) is released on Monday; Africa Plays On (Because Music) is released on June 12
