Please excuse me posting this song again. I was going to use a BLUE CLICKY THING but I could not remember which thread it was in.

Down on the border

Down on the border, where do you draw that line?
Well here I can lay down my life for a land that will never be mine
If I was standing on the outside, you wouldn't let me in
It might be my religion or the colour of my skin

Down on the border, when you draw that line
Am I standing inside, or am I left outside?

They're telling you life should be rosy, "ain't you living in your own backyard"?
The stakes are getting higher, time to play that nationalist card
That joker's a wild one, eager to get out of the pack
It ain't so easy, trying to get the bastard back

Down on the border, when you draw that line
Am I standing inside, or am I left outside?

Does the fruit really taste better, just because it's home grown?
Why should there be an improvement, when we are ruled by one of our own?
When they come and they tell you. it's time to make a stand
Remember the good and the bad apples, growing on your land

Down on the border, when you draw that line
Am I standing inside, or am I left outside?

Whatever country claims you, it's no measure of your worth
You can take no credit, it's just an accident of birth
Why not strive for a union, a federation of states?
Sustained by co-operation, where nations are maintained on hate

Down on the border, when you draw that line
Am I standing inside, or am I left outside?

Roger Gall 1997

Dai

Well I don't know if I saw the same ones as you and I don't want to get away from the music too much, as it is far more important and interesting to me than the strange (to me) concept of nationhood. It is probably, as you say, where I am looking from, that makes nationality so irrelevant to me, but I can well understand your view.

The programmes made me sad, as I can see there fuel enough for a new breed of English nationalism, wanting all the same advantages that they will think Scotland and Wales will have. To me it is all irrelevant, and a backward step. It is an accident of birth where you come from and not much to be proud of and die for. Where you go is surely more important than where you come from?

Here I stand ready to be mocked, but to be British, is worth something, as we all have to work at that, or to be European or even a Citizen Of The World. The concept of nations has not worked in the past and is not working now. The whole situation is there for clever, unscrupulous individuals to exploit for their own ends, as we can see all too clearly at the moment, but we still seem to swallow the bait every time.

How can millions of people of all physical shapes and sizes, talents and capabilities, so different from each other in their ambitions and requirements, function as if they naturally belong together in the artificially drawn national boundaries that they find themselves in?

To use Margarita's rainbow analogy with national boundaries. You get areas where the people obviously appear to be a definite a colour and between them are areas where the colour is not so clear. It is there, on the borderlines, that all this nationalistic nonsense falls down.

Sam

The fact that music sounds different, from different places in the world, I certainly don't dispute and long may that be the case. (I for one, certainly don't want it to all sound the same, but I don't think there is really much danger of that happening). It just doesn't fall neatly into the artificially drawn national borders.

The example you used of an Indian scale, is a point. The idea of all the peoples and cultures of that huge area, drawn up largely by the British Empire, as having a music that could be defined and recognised clearly as Indian, is an over simplification, surely?

In all the places that you mentioned, you would also find, Michael Jackson, jazz, blues, rock&roll and just about everything else, all exerting an influence. The Tango is pretty big in Finland too (true honest).