Anybody have the lyrics?  ...along with a translation?  Thank You.

What a soft PURRRRRRRRRR  of a voice...  Very nice indeed.

 kerr wrote: 
That'll be the pipes in the background, I reckon. This song, and this singer, really grow on me. The goosepimples are rising as I write. 9 from the Nottingham jury.

Glad I'm not the only one who heard a bit of Christy Moore in this.

 ThePoose wrote: 

Well, now that you mention it...

I hear a sort of Leonhard C. and Peter G!? But nice!!

 Cynaera wrote: 

Serendipity! I've read Eddings AND own this album, I never would have made the connection or used the word serendipity...
thanks Cynaera and RP! I'm always entertained here...

I've never heard this song, or this artist, before - it gives me chills.  In a good way. Irony:  I have a series of books written by the late David Eddings, and one of the characters is referred to as "Anakha," which means (in Eddings' world) "He who makes his own destiny." 

beauty.

 df1489 wrote:Thanks, I can hear that now. 

 Dillinquent wrote: 
PG's doing background vocals...from his Real World label...
Exile is a great album

Nice. Sounds like a PG song.

Funny you said that.  Before the vocals began, I thought it was Christy Moore. 

anotherlistener wrote: 

 Jared wrote: 
I'm one of 'em.  Love this song.  I don't think it originated on this album though.
Don't know if anyone's mentioned already that's PG back there.

 eastcoast wrote: 
An entry like yours I came to look for....

Only about 50 RP listeners are shown on the Google Map App on RP's front page to hear this.

 ThePoose wrote: 
I hear it.

 Limpopoking wrote: 

 first note: a shiver and goose bumps! Don't know why it feels like crying and smiling at the same time when I hear this. Pain and hapiness at the same time? 10-> 11 !

This man has a voice smoother than mercury on glass, and that's smooth. More Oryema, please :)

love it

Peter Gabriel produced this. Definitely can hear the influence

 robco1 wrote: 
And the tune you are thinking of is Who by Fire.

Absolutely beautiful...so serene. 10

For 1.2 seconds I thought this was Madrugada / Leonard Cohen

Edit:  Oh, so did you guys :P

robco1 wrote:
Geoffrey Oryema is on the highly recommendable LC-tribute sampler I'm Your Fan with a version of Suzanne.

Wonder if this guy ever heard of Cristy Moore?...looking back I have said this before...

 Chi_Guy wrote:

 
Well, Odysseus did travel quite a bit.

flyboy wrote: I've seen those chaps from Krackow, Poland to Melbourne , Australia...it's spooky, they seem to follow me around the world?

SDBob wrote: Just say no to crack. Especially yellow crack.

I've heard this song so much on RP... and I am always glad to hear it end...

I just love Geoffrey Oryema. Such a gr8 muso! Thanx RP

robco1 wrote: Fine, I'm not alone. Anyway, the song and it's mood are beautiful.

xc_para_puravida wrote: Yes.

squidish wrote: One year I saw those guys at a Fourth of July parade in Bellingham, WA, and then in March of the next spring I went on a trip to Africa, and stopped in Amsterdam on the way back and saw them outside the main train terminal there. There wasn't anything going on, just them playing, and we were the only ones around. Some old wino dude was asking my 12 year old sister to dance with him. Then they (the Andes guys, not the wino) started coming to the Alaska state fair the last few years. They must like traveling.

Leonard Cohen? (Just the lower notes at the beginning).

Reminds me of Cristy Moore.

I like

Transcendental, Ethereal, Sublime, Exquisite...

squidish wrote: Thought it was just me.

I've stopped and restarted the stream several times because something in this song exactly mimics the sort of distortion I get when I have buffering problems. Otherwise pretty cool.

Nice and mysterious, except for that damn pan flute whistle thing. Reminds me of those dudes in ponchos that pop up selling CDs with their amplified Andes flute=pipe sound system at every bloody street fair around the world. They followed me around Tx and NY and CA, then even showed up under the Eiffel Tower! You've seen them, too, right? Or should I up my meds?

xkolibuul wrote:I just found the music to be pretentious (maybe oozing was a little harsh). Honestly though, I generally divorce the music from the lyrics when I first listen to a song. If the music doesn't move me in some way, I usually don't get to the lyrics. It is music after all and not poetry. Put another way, lyrics can bump a song up a point or maybe two if I think they are tremendous, but can only detract a point or so provided they are extremely dumb or offensive. So maybe the statement I made about pretentiousness wasn't "utterly" baseless, just different than those who put more emphasis on lyrics. The lyrics (and his story) were quite moving (what I could find of them after some searching--please post them if you have them): "we had hopes, we had dreams, dreams of a clear green land. In place of the family house, dead sand, dead sand". The "dead sand" part is especially evocative. I still think the music itself seemed manipulative of emotion (pretentious/contrived/affected, whatever). A good 80% of the people who rated this song do not agree with me on that one. I'll listen to it again, but I'm not sure that will help.

seedeater wrote: No kidding! I looked him up on RP because - language and background vocals aside - I couldn't believe it wasn't Leonard Cohen. This is cool music. Leonard Cohen with a better producer.

It reminds me of every dark Dire Straits song, with an echo of something very NOT Dire. Me likey.

An African Leonard Cohen?

eres un maestroooo

Do you understand the lyrics? I don't see how you can make that judgement without them. Utterly baseless. Wizzuvv_oz wrote:

this is hauntingly beautiful music...

Radio_Man wrote:I concur.

Is this guy Dutch by any chance?

Sounds like fog and rain...like driving from the blistering heat of California's central valley into San Francisco fog...no idea why, but thats what it reminds me of.

Ooozes pretentiousness and pomposity IMO. Great, huge, oily globs of it.

So simple but so beautiful. I have probaply owned the CD (Exile) for 15 years, but this song still stops me in my tracks every time.

celadonstone wrote: If Guns, Germs, and Steel is an accurate analysis of geographic factors, said alternate universe would require a different configuration of the continents. I'm really interested in the current preservation work going on in Timbuktu - the library there was the center of world knowledge ca. 1400, thanks to the gold-fueled Malian trade empire. Unfortunately, desertification has turned Mali into one of the poorest countries in the world.

queenjill wrote: This is my first time hearing the song, so those sounds eluded me. But since the discussion mention clicking in African languages, I do recall seeing a film on the !Kung in anthropology in college. In a parallel universe, perhaps everyone is not speaking English, instead, an african dialect is the language of business.

What a nice pleasing song.

Thank you Bill for playing Geoffrey. Please play 'Ye ye ye ' too, one of his best.

Shesdifferent wrote: Did you see that south park episode when they go to nebraska and everything is brown @ the state line?

reminds me of Christy Moore

jbtidwell wrote: You mean Viva Las Vegas?

Shesdifferent wrote:

I love this! Man, is his voice loooooowwwwww. The_Waker wrote: Well, your in Nebraska go figure

Wow! It takes a lot to pull me up out of a nap, but this song did it. Beautiful! As to the clicks and clacks... if you cannot handle the speech and sounds of another's language without rudeness spewing forth from your own mouth, go listen to Barney the Purple Dinosaur and have some more pablum.

algrif wrote: No, I think it is just that crackly dry-spit sound. Yuck.

algrif wrote: But it still sounds gross.

MrSpaz wrote:Hi. Thanks for such an ignorant comment. Don't you know that many African languages have clicks etc sounds that are not normally found in European languages?

Thanks, Bill.

beautiful as ever what about some salif keta

oscar_driver wrote:So true. The feeling is all there; the lament, the sadness. I didn't know what it meant either, of course, but this is what I found out: The song is indeed a lament. It's about yearning for the singer's homeland, Uganda, which he terms the "Land of Anaka." Anaka is a resettlement camp for former exiles and is located in northern Uganda. Geoffrey Oryema has lived in exile from Uganda since 1977, following his father's death during Idi Amin's regime. (The elder Oryema was at the time the minister for natural resources and was murdered on Amin's orders.) In the song, the grown-up Geoffrey attempts to soothe the pain of his widowed mother.

I can't believe how shallow I was about this at first listen, (a year ago?) really, REALLY grown on me...into me. Quite an artist. I used to categorize this as 'Subtitle ' music. Respectful 8.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmgoooooooooooooood

great song just amazing vocalization got me dragged into the song almost like a religious experience

jbtidwell wrote: Very witty

hmmmmm- pretty repetative though. zzzzz

Caught the first few notes right away.....really beautiful!

Anybody else hear "Via Las Vegas" being sung in the backgound? O:)

Beautiful, no need to understand lyrics! just plain beautiful! OScar

MrSpaz wrote: This doesn't bother me too much, but reminds me of a hilarious parody MAD Magazine did some years back of Lee J. Cobb's delivery, "Smack, smack, drool..."

MrSpaz wrote: I think it must be part of his schtick

Ok, not to detract from the song too much, because I do like it, but: the sticky-saliva clicks when the guy is singing drive me bonkers. There's a piece of studio equipment specifically to prevent those from being recorded, why did they leave it off?

redeyespy wrote: I always think it's going to be "The Partisan"!!...(that's the one with "there were two of us last evening, there is one of us this morning"...right?) I love both that and this.

UPLOAD "DRUMMER BOY" BY VBC...

deathmstrss wrote: ...and Peter Gabriel does "Suzanne" too on another Cohen tribute. Small (green) world, yes?

alanb wrote: Geoffrey Oryema actually does a beautiful version of Suzanne on the "I'm Your Fan" tribute album to Cohen. That is where I first heard his voice and have made a point to seek out more of his work since then.

I heard this song and I was really touched so I look and saw Oryema with Eno. Then paying attention I could sing Peter Gabriel in the background, what a delight.

Wow, so much of this would fit in with Hobbiton/Shire. Must be the Celt part. A 7.

alanb wrote: The first bars sounded like Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat," then the voice came on and I almost thought it WAS Leonard. Nice tune.

You should play Leonard Cohen after this, something like "Hunter's Lullaby" or "Suzanne". It would flow very well together with this...

This is probably my favorite song of all-time. I can't believe that it was on RadioParadise. I am going to be an even more devoted listener now. AJ

Roverfish wrote: The first seconds of the song I was remided of "Where the Wild Roses Grow." but then I heard it was quite different.

For some reason, this reminds me of the Nick Cave/Kylie Minogue duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow." Anyone else know that song or hear it too? Really beautiful song!

What a song! Not very surprised when I saw '& Brian Eno'. He probably told Peter Gabriel to chant in that way, although PG rules himself too, of course....

I must admit that I\'m a bit surprised, but I actually liked this one. Wahey!

Yeah, you can hear PG vocalizing in the background.

Somebody wake me up when it\'s over...

This is from Geoffry Oreyma\'s first release, I think Peter Gabriel is helping out too. All of this guys CD\'s are awesome. the original Afro -Celt sound system.