This is progressive liberal Malta: the winning song in the Ghanja tal-Poplu contest is an ode (sounds more like a dirge) to the martyred and heroic Maltese housewife
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March 19, 2014 at 1:37am
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It really is another planet.
Universe?
I think this is meant for Michelle Muscat. Certainly goes against what she was saying at that “lecture” of hers.
This woman isn’t exactly complaining, just describing what she does and affirming that it’s her choice.
No, she’s not. She’s playing the martyr and demanding acclaim for doing so.
That poor woman in that video needs to go to work to earn some money to buy some food to eat, so she can put some meat on those bones.
She’s not singing about herself, and not even pretending to do so. It’s a simplistic stylistic device: singing about a person’s life as though you are that person.
I suggest you publish your photo to see how beautiful you are before you criticise other people. If you are not a coward show us your beauty. Secondly, the girl in the video is not a poor woman, she has a job and also studies. This is all jealousy because she actually won the contest with a song which reveals the sad truth, unlike many others who simply get voted as the best because of who they are instead for the quality of the song. If you are against the meaning behind the lyrics, fine, after all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I don’t think this is a place for such crappy comments.
I’d like to interview Ms DeBattista. Can we get her input on my piece below?
(That is NOT a pun)
Yes, it is sad to see such a sad song written about the most noble profession, that of being keeper of the house – male or female.
I always wondered why someone would want to go to do a boring job working with objectionable people all day when they could stay home and do something rewarding. Before someone jumps down my throat, I know that there are some rewarding jobs, but let’s face it, most are horrible.
Chesterton:
“How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
I would add “…woman/man’s function…” above . Also, any woman earning upwards of €2500 per month please write in. Thank you.
[Daphne – Please let’s stop this nonsense. We’re talking about washing floors and doing the laundry here (with a machine), not tending to the wounded on a battlefield. There is nothing remotely noble about it. It’s purely functional, and very depressing, and the only reason women do it is because 1. they can’t afford to pay anyone else to do it, and 2. a dirty house with an empty fridge and piles of laundry is even more depressing than the alternative.]
Daphne, not all of us can claim to have an exciting career as a journalist. Some of us mere mortals crunch pointless numbers all day or deal with idiotic customers. Yes, in comparison cleaning the floors is quite rewarding, as is bringing up children.
[Daphne – I don’t have an exciting career as a journalist. I write a newspaper column twice a week. How exciting is that? And when it comes to dealing with idiotic customers, you may have failed to notice, but that is what a large part of my life consists of, except that they’re not customers.]
Spending one hour in traffic to get to the workhouse by car, that google maps says takes 75 mins to walk to, in pollution, traffic and a sea of brain-dead drivers is not my cup of tea, but maybe that makes me an eccentric.
[Daphne – I thought workhouses were closed down a hundred years ago. I’ll just say this: staying at home instead of working is only fun and enticing when it is a break, even a long break, from working. It’s just like weekends, which are only fun because there are weekdays. There is a reason why diazepam (Valium) is called the housewife’s drug, and why more housewives than you could possibly know are hooked on it or on anti-depressants.]
This is what education is for: to improve yourself and find a job that gives you satisfaction.
Remaining in a job ‘crunching pointless numbers all day’ is soul-destroying, so educate/train yourself for something you like to do and go for it.
Life is too short to spend it doing something you dislike.
If you find housework satisfying, then that too is your prerogative – but then quit your ‘pointless number crunching’ job, go for it and stop complaining.
Rumpelstiltskin, have a look at the European job market some time. It makes for interesting reading. Also, when one’s passion has become obsolete or the sector has slowly become redundant there is not much one can do.
Idealising aside, the fact is that most people do a job they would prefer not to be forced to do 40-60 hours a week.
I am no longer a teenager talking to a wise uncle; I don’t need to be given advice on the basis of a fantasy.
I do not hate my job, in fact I’d say it is quite rewarding.
My point was that given the mindnumbingly boring nature of most jobs, I struggle to fathom the bad name given to the work of a housewife/husband. I do not see how most jobs can be considered superior, and by most jobs I mean 95% minimum.
As for workhouses, call it poetic license or dramatisation if you like.
I really don’t agree with you, Daphne. My wife is a professional but she took a long work break to raise the kids and they are rather happier for it.
[Daphne – We’re not discussing looking after our children here, Phoenix. We’re discussing housework, which is entirely different. It would be a man to classify looking after children as housework (along with the mopping and ironing), just as so many Maltese men describe looking after their own children as ‘babysitting’, a massively Freudian give-away which reveals what they think their role as father is, and what the role of the child’s mother is.
But if you wish to discuss that instead, I’ll just say this: you have no way of knowing whether your children are all the happier for having a non-working mother, because the research controls are not there. You cannot bring your children up twice, once with a working mother and once without, to see whether they really are happier than they would have been. You can take it from me that they would have been exactly the same. It is not whether a mother works or not which affects children’s behaviour and temperament, but other factors. There are plenty of children with stay-at-home mothers, who are miserable, anorexic, depressive, anxious and do really badly at school and in life.
When a woman tells herself repeatedly that her children are better off for her not working, it is her way of reassuring herself that she made the right choice about her life, not theirs. She doesn’t want to have to deal with the possibility that she might have made other choices, and the ones she made were the wrong ones. This is normal, incidentally. Working women have the same doubts at times.
As for non-working women being better mothers and more successful ones than working mothers, all you have to do is remember that almost everyone in Malta grew up, before this newest generation of adults, with a stay-at-home mother. Look at the results.]
We can and do take on help but that’s not the point. Reducing stay at home mummies simply to washerwoman isn’t the point.
[Daphne – I am afraid you have missed the point entirely. Housework is distinct from childcare. Not working outside the home does not mean you get to do the housework, not when you can pay somebody else to do it. And I would avoid using the term ‘stay at home mummies’. It is terribly condescending and patronising, and guaranteed to get the backs up of all but the most idiotically simpering women.]
Mum is the focal point around which we, husband and kids revolve around and look to to keep the family going AS A FAMILY, a value that seemingly people see as just a function nowadays.
[Daphne – I really wish you would sit down, read that again, and realise how atavistic it sounds. That is late 1940s/1950s western propaganda, and in those years, that message was fed into society for a reason. Women had gone into the workforce during the war to take on the jobs that soldiers had left behind, and to keep the economy going as far as it could be kept going. When the soldiers came home from the war, they needed their jobs back, but the women were not too happy to give up their financial and social independence and the fun of going out to work. So the glorification of the housewife around whom the family revolves began in earnest, to persuade women back into the home. Look at the advertising of the era, and you’ll see what I mean: from women in workwear headscarves and dungarees, holding spanners, to the same women in New Look skirts, starched frocks and pinnies, holding an egg-whisk.]
Family building involves lots of an ingredient called love, and the kids will benefit from it when adults and will pass on the values instilled in the family to their new family, values that the Muscats pooh pooh.
[Daphne – I find your talk really condescending and insulting and quite frankly, I’m surprised your wife hasn’t told you as much. It must be awful, living in a household where your husband and children treat you like an asexual martyred saint with no personality or interests other than them. What are you saying here? That working and building a family are mutually exclusive? That women who work don’t love their children or look after them? I think it’s time to remind you that you’re talking to somebody who raised three children born a year apart: that means three children all in nappies at the same time for a while, and I wasn’t in my 30s either. I was 24. The patronising way Maltese men speak to women and of them is dreadful. Having children is part of life. There really is no need to turn it into some kind of heroic mission. It isn’t. It’s normal.]
So yes, this is a good song because it reminds us that there is a person at the sink, in the laundry and who is there to mop up physical and emotional messes. The role of wife and mother should be celebrated for what it is……a rock on which family values can thrive, and this country needs these rocks. I’m not saying that women cannot be wives and also work…..this is an ideal but many times impractical proposition that would challenge many employers. But let’s not reduce housework or family building to a function.
[Daphne – Disgusting, really disgusting: “there is a person at the sink, in the laundry and who is there to mop up physical and emotional messes”. You should be ashamed of yourself.]
Daphne you said, “the only reason women do it is because 1. they can’t afford to pay anyone else to do it..”.
That is quite a generic statement. My mother afforded and still affords to have a team of housekeepers, not just one. But she prefers to run the domestic house chores herself and she does it with love and dedication.
What is boring for one person is motivational for another. So in my opinion, your comment applies to a vast number of women but definitely not all.
[Daphne – It is immediately apparent from your statement that your mother does all that herself because it makes her feel relevant and useful which, without a job and probably also without any interests, she wouldn’t. Doing the housework is her way of ensuring that she remains relevant, and she fears that if somebody else does it for her, they will render her useless.
Making a big show of “doing it with love and dedication” is part of this. This sort of behaviour by women of a certain generation is directly responsible for the weakness of character and the arrested psychological and emotional development of many Maltese men, which manifests itself in the wholesale breakdown of marriages a generation later, and grown men behaving like twerps on the public stage. I do not even remotely suggest that you are such a man, but unfortunately, this problem is widespread.
The only other three reasons why women insist on doing all the housework themselves when they can afford to pay somebody else to do it are: a lack of understanding of opportunity cost, which makes them believe they are saving money; they are control freaks (more common than you think); they don’t want anyone in the house.]
Yes, it is sad when some people do it for the reasons you mentioned but there are others who would happily do it.
I for one do my own housework even though I can afford to pay a cleaner. I prefer to do it myself because I do not like having strangers in my house.
[Daphne – There you go. That was one of the reasons I gave. I’ll admit that it’s difficult to find a decent and trustworthy person, because this is after all the ultimate position of trust, but it can be done.]
I don’t think that makes me a freak because I think it quite normal to not want strangers in one’s house.
[Daphne – The person you engage to do your housework is only a stranger for the first few weeks. After that, and especially after years, they become part of the household and even less of a stranger than your own friends.]
Also, the idea of paying someone to do what many consider menial work just seems so classist that I just can’t bring myself to do it. But then others will say I am denying someone a job. God help us. Anyway, can we discuss the Ukraine or something?
[Daphne – Yes, that last thing you mention is often the problem. Coincidentally, I was just discussing it now over lunch and the person I was speaking to said exactly that, “They think it’s wrong to pay someone to do their housework, because they see it as completely different to, say, paying someone to do their typing or answer their phone at the office. But it isn’t.” Also, it all depends on the milieu in which people grew up. If you grow up in a milieu where the default position is that wives do the housework, then you will see this as the default position and think that it is the wife’s job and that paying somebody else to do it is both exceptional and also her responsibility. But if you grow up in a milieu in which others did the housework (as a paid job) while wives did other things like look after the children or themselves, then you will see this as the default position and, when you do have to do some cleaning, will feel put upon as though you are doing something that you shouldn’t have to do, because in your world, housework is not done by wives, but done by people who are paid to do it.]
You have an interesting take on that last point and I find it hard to counter. The need for maids seems to have been bred out of my family.
My grandma grew up with maids’ quarters in their house (it is truly unimaginable to me but I understand the logic), she then had maids in her house (but not live-in), our house was mostly my mother but one could say the housework was shared, and now I do it all myself.
Now most of the people I know do not have that background — let’s be honest, their parents were mostly labourers — yet they all have maids, even for ironing shirts. It is as though this tendency to have or to not have maids goes full circle. They are at the beginning of the cycle and I am at the end.
[Daphne – No, you are just proof of what I said earlier: that those who grow up watching their mothers clean the house think of it as the default position. You were programmed by example, in your formative years, to think that the housework gets done by the wife and mother, not by somebody paid to do it. I think of housework as a paid job for somebody else, nothing to do with the resident wife.]
Also, with regard to having strangers in the house, I should have added the most pertinent point. I see no point paying someone to do something I can do in 2 hours myself. For the life of me, I just can’t see it. Giving them the keys, leaving the house (to go and do what exactly?), asking them what I want that week. I don’t know, it just seems less of a hassle to do it myself. And do not kill me but I find cleaning therapeutic.
[Daphne – Two hours? Do you live alone in two rooms, or what? As for find cleaning therapeutic, it takes all sorts, and some people play golf and cards, two other things that I would never do, so…]
I disagree. Housework is noble, it does help everyone live in dignity and in a clean place. However it can be done by anyone, it doesn’t have to be the wife alone. Children can pitch in too.
[Daphne – I’m afraid you are wrong. Housework is not noble (what does that mean, anyway). It is purely functional. It is also extremely dull, boring, tedious, repetitive and uncreative (and unpaid), and the reason it is glorified is solely to create, successfully with some people it seems, the feeling that they are doing something heroic, which feeling serves as its own reward. The reason why men, children, teenagers and even very many women have to be chased and harried into doing housework is precisely because it is so very awful. Most people who can just pay somebody else to do it and never lift a mop again, even if it means having less money to spend on other things. And when you are paid to do it, it becomes your job, and then it takes on a different aspect. Because you are paid.]
Besides, I hold a full-time and a part-time job. My husband does the same, and we participate in housework equally.
[Daphne – I have never heard of such a thing, a couple both of whom have full-time jobs and who don’t pay somebody else to do the housework. Why on earth don’t you? It’s called opportunity cost: your free time, when you are working all day, is worth more than the money paid to get this service rendered. Your own health is worth more than working all day then coming home to clean, wash and iron. And with both of you working full time, money is clearly not the issue. So the reason must be the exact same reason Maltese people never take taxis, even if it saves them a lot of inconvenience.]
However housework is boring and any job is better, even if that job is being a housemaid. At least you get out of the house and meet other people while earning some money too.
[Daphne – Oh good, so we agree on that.]
Well, we do pay someone to do the floors, bathrooms and windows, but unfortunately there’s still the laundry and cooking to be done. I don’t mind cooking but sometimes we’re both too tired after work so it becomes tedious.
My point is that being a housewife is not a job. It’s what a woman who has no job is called.
Ladies, get off your bums. Get out and do something with your lives. The era where the man goes out to work while the wife tends to the house and children is long gone. The housework will be done anyway.
The point isn’t the housework or its nobility or otherwise, but the ludicrousness of writing a heart-wrenching ballad about it.
I do housework, but when they write a song about me, I’ll make damn sure it’s about the dragons I’ve slain, the bling I own, or my prowess as a lover.
What does the woman in the picture have to do with the song? Surely she is not the ‘martyred’ housewife being mentioned as she is very very well groomed.
This woman’s grumbling lyrics are designed to mask the fact that her husband earns enough to enable her to stay at home and do the housework.
Others are not so ‘lucky’.
Her husband isn’t lucky either. Imagine going home to that sort of martyred attitude every evening.
I am a housewife or rather a stay-at-home mum but I feel neither martyred nor heroic.
I simply put my career on hold to bring up my sons.
My plans are to go back to work when my children are old enough to fend for themselves.
On the other hand I shouldn’t be judged because of my choice because I never judge mothers who take babies to child care to pursue their career.
[Daphne – You just did.]
No I didn’t. I just stated a fact that some mothers choose to stay at home and others choose to pursue their careers. Who’s to judge who’s right or wrong?
Is this the Eurovision entry?
It should be. It’s a typically Maltese song about a typically Maltese 1950s attitude towards life and women.
“Tinkwetax… nimmaniġġja waħdi” (meta fil-fatt ikollok bżonn ftit għajnuna).
Min jilgħabha tal-martri ma jirbaħx punti.
Mela llum għad hawn nisa li jaħsbu li la r-raġel u lanqas it-tfal ma tista’ tqabbadhom xejn għax dak xogħolhom?
Kont ħsibt li spiċċa dak iż-żmien fejn il-mara tagħmel kollox hi mingħajr ma titlob l-għajnuna …tilgħabha tal-martri.
Billi llum il-mara fil-biċċa l-kbira tal-każi trid tibqa’ taħdem anke wara li tiżżewweġ, ix-xogħol tad-dar għandha tara li tqassmu mal-membri l-oħra tal-familja (sew jekk ir-raġel u ‘l quddiem anke t-tfal) u kulħadd jagħmel il-biċċa tiegħu. Bil-krib biss ma nieħdu xejn.
U jekk nirrifjutaw l-għajnuna, ħaddieħor jaħsibha darbtejn jerġax joffrilna li jgħinna.
Minflok, mara tad-dar (għax hekk qalet li hi fil-kanzunetta) tgħallem iddelega billi toffri għażla ta’ diversi biċċiet tax-xogħol li jridu jsiru. Meta qed tħalli l-persuna l-oħra tagħżel, tkun qed tinforza l-ispirtu ta’ tim u hekk ma tibqax tagħmel kollox waħdek .
Another song should be written about the woman who is constrained to go out to work for financial reasons to help make ends meet AND, at the end of the day also manages to tend to the wounded and feeds the platoon.
The lyrics are not a tribute to women at all. Fine, if one decides to stay at home so be it, but lets not give the impression that a working woman is a sign of ‘family
treason’.
What a bundle of joy this cheerless housewife is. Welcome back to the dark ages with women chained to the kitchen sink. H.P.Baxxter is spot on, Malta really is another planet.
Now you know why village bars are full of men from as early as 5am. They’re escaping the smell of pine disinfectant and the sound of martyrdom.
And despite the almost fatal accident because of structural collapse of the space-frame, the show will still go on.
I couldn’t believe my ears when I first heard the song.
I didn’t know Simone de Beauvoir could sing.
That reference is wasted on the people who most need to understand it.
I thought they vanished into thin air. It turns out they win song contests.
Venish into tin air, you mean.
And why do you ask women who earn more than Eur 2500 a month to write in?
Do you not think it possible or maybe permissible for women to earn that kind of money?
[Daphne – To whom are these questions addressed? I’m getting confused here.]
I think it is addressed to me. The reason I asked is because I am offering myself to be someone’s house husband. It was a joke – granted, a bad one. Maybe you didn’t get that.
Also Nathalie, I would not be lying if I said that of all the people I know, the women I know earn much more money than the men.
I’m sorry, I meant to post this as a comment to albona.
The Maltese Diaper Blues is born.
Borma Blues, really. This is the sort of talk you get from women whose babies are in their 20s.
Poor soul. She has definitely not worked for Super one. Otherwise she would have been singing MONEY MONEY MONEY makes Labour go round.
An example of how learned helplessness is taught.
Pathetic. What planet are they on?
I believe the songwriter is a teacher, so he should know better.
I’ve been working since I left university, and I am a wife, mother and grandmother. I wouldn’t change one minute of my life.
What utter rubbish this is. Is this sort of retrograde propaganda the sort of thing we can expect more of under our progressive, liberal and “most feminist” government?
I think we got it all wrong. The lyrics are talking about someone who is either a slave or has an abusive husband.
I am a housewife as I decided to have a career break, but I go out, dress up and have other things to do besides cleaning and cooking. It seems we’re really back in the 70s.
It appears you believe L-Għanja tal-Poplu is some sort of Labour activity. It is not. It is broadcast on One, but it is organised by the YTC, who make no claims about being progressive or liberal.
In fairness, however, L-Għanja tal-Poplu seems to have become a sort of “Festival tal-Valuri Tradizzjonali”. The song that won last year was called “Hawn Siġġu Nieqes”, and it was basically complaining that people were not getting married in the church, and not keeping a place for Jesus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmUMJKj5RNk
That is why I’ve given up on Malta. You can’t vote this stupidity away. You’d need mass deportation.
I hope Jozef is here somewhere, because we need his input.
The Maltese are congenitally unable to match form and function. To do so, you need a lifetime of absorbing the little elements of cultural normality. With us, it’s impossible.
What we have here is a young woman, hot and doable as they come, bare-shouldered, clad in a glitzy dress with a rather plunging neckline, made up like it was Oscar night or the MTV Music Awards, hair pulled back to reveal the cheekbones and the fuck-me eyes, exuding eroticism…and singing about housework.
It’s the massive, giant, sheer incongruence of it all that gets me.
You’d expect her to be singing about getting felt up at the club by all the bare-torsoed, ripped alpha males, or getting showered in Prada and D&G handbags and shoes, or dominating her boyfriend, or, at a pinch, about not needing any man because she’s fine without him now.
But this! Doing the dishes and the laundry, and mopping up the floor, all in a language that doesn’t match the glamour.
It makes my brain hurt. It does, really.
If you want to sing about traditional family values of yore, then dress the part. Be a folk singer or something. Those “ghana” fellows stay true to their lyrics. Maximum respect to them.
Dear H. P. Baxter,
I read this article a while ago, and to be honest, I didn’t think it was worth answering to all the comments, especially yours. But seeing as you wanted to know my opinion regarding your comment above, here it is.
First of all, I don’t appreciate your description of how I look; for me, being described as ‘hot and doable’ (together with the rest of your comments) is an insult. You obviously don’t know me – I wouldn’t even have you as a friend in the first place; I’d want my true friends, especially guys, to respect me and women in general, and I’d totally give them hell if I ever was to hear them making such comments about anyone, let alone me. Not unlike most people, you had the guts to judge me by my looks – in public. Why shouldn’t I have a right to look classy and made up, not only when I’m taking part in a competition of the sort, but even elsewhere without being judged? And to make things worse, you even said that due to the lyrics of the song, I shouldn’t even be looking like that! What nonsense is this?! I didn’t wear a dress that made me look super sexy (and I’m talking about what I wore in the actual competition); I wasn’t trying to be provocative. I just stood there in a simple outfit and sang, like most artists do, because my job was that of passing on the message of the song to the audience. I am not a housewife, but as an artist, I had to play the part.Thankfully I could look up to my mother, and I kept her in mind while I was singing, as she too was once a housewife. Today she has a job and also takes care of the family, and I admire her for that, as I do others.
Another comment which was totally uncalled for was the following: ‘But this! Doing the dishes and the laundry, and mopping up the floor, all in a language that doesn’t match the glamour.’ Why shouldn’t I look good in a decent contemporary outfit while performing a song in my beautiful native language about a social issue? What’s with the negativity here? I like to look classy, whatever the situation. I just wore a simple black jumpsuit on the night, and I had my hair pulled back because that’s how I feel comfortable. Had I worn something different (as in looking like a traditional housewife), you’d probably be criticizing me and saying that for a woman in her early twenties, she’s old fashioned and out-dated. Pick a side. And don’t you think our language is suitable for all the glitz and glam? To me, that is an utterly ridiculous comment which shows that you don’t even appreciate your identity, one factor of that being our language; judging by our comments, you’re one of those who still thinks that we’re old-fashioned and not able of progressing to the modern age like the rest of the world. And to make things worse for yourself, you’re here criticizing the lyrics of a song in Maltese (apart from other issues such as my looks).
I am NOT going to go into the issue of the lyrics. I believe that everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion. You (and others) don’t agree with the lyrics of the song? Fine by me. Just don’t listen to the song. There are plenty of other performers around.. just listen to them. But to judge me by my looks and saying what you’d expect me to be doing (I’m referring to your comment ‘You’d expect her to be singing about getting felt up at the club by all the bare-torsoed, ripped alpha males, or getting showered in Prada and D&G handbags and shoes, or dominating her boyfriend, or, at a pinch, about not needing any man because she’s fine without him now.’) is uncalled for. I can assure you that I am not that kind of woman; never was and never will be. I am neither a hoar nor a bitch; I love to look classy and smart and put together. I look after myself as best as I could, as I believe ever woman who takes pride in her dignity should do.
K
Since my comment was about the incongruence of the song and the singer, I think it’s your agents and songwriters who should have take offence, not you.
You raised a lot of issues which go far beyond your song.
No, I don’t think Maltese is the best language for pop/house/anything glamorous. Mix Maltese and glamour together, and the result comes out looking like something on Al Arabiya. It’s got nothing to do with national pride. It’s just the structure and melody of the language. Just like you cannot do rock ‘n’ roll in French or Italian, or rap in Russian. I’m surprised your songwriters don’t know this.
I cannot understand why you take exception to my thumbnail sketch of you. When you’re up on stage, you want to be the desirable object, or you’re in the wrong line of business. Everyone does, including ostensibly intellectual singers. The eroticism is part of the package. And it’s got nothing to do with respecting women or not. It’s the job. You said yourself that you want to look classy. So you know exactly what I’m on about.
The “doable”, of course, is not a comment on my own ability, so don’t take offence there either. I know my limits, and they fall far short of you.
Finally, you should realise that as a celebrity, you have to live with a range of fair comment that is far wider than that for us ordinary people. You should enjoy it. That is what is show biz is all about. Along with the Prada and D&G. Look at Losco, for heaven’s sake…
I don’t agree with you regarding Maltese and glamour, primarily because the song is a ballad which allows the beauty of the language to be the main focus, apart from the subject of the song. What could be described as glamorous would probably be my outfit (I still think it was not out of the ordinary.. I wasn’t wearing an evening dress, for crying out loud!) which I don’t seem to think affects how people perceive the song.
I said I want to look classy, true, but that’s were it ends. I don’t want to look desirable on stage. To me there’s a difference between the two. And I don’t see why you generalise: ‘everyone does’. Can’t I be an exception to the rule? Don’t get me wrong, I understood your point, but I don’t agree that it’s part of the job. I like the attention when I’m up on stage, but I want it for all the right reasons.
What can I say?
Absolutely right about form and function. We tend to invent convention when there’s no need.
Fuq il-klassiku, modern, rustiku, etc, and nowhere is function catered for.
I’ve seen people take offence whenever function was mentioned, everything has to be make pretend notwithstanding some places require function, form being essential to its harmonic execution.
With the Maltese it’s all bla bla.
Fact is, we have a serious issue with abstraction and its primary instruments; semantics and semiotics.
I’ve had friends over who politely observed they couldn’t understand us as a people by looking at our visual compositions, be they shopfronts, facades, street furniture et al.
Then they’d try to read roadsigns and it all fell into place; illegible. I’ve come to the conclusion that the spoken word remains handicapped with an overloaded symbol system.
As long as that’s in place, the work of an exclusive caste whose sole intention is to wrap a simple instrument, read function, in the trappings of some ideological semitic dominated latin script, (when it should, in my view, be the other way round, ie, the script which determines phonetics), we’re screwed.
There’s this horrible mental bureacratic rule book in everything we make, simply because intelligence is restrained with these rough inadequate instruments:
Gris becomes vjola or kanella, and that’s just colour, style has to fall into one of four categories, the more adventurous trying desperately to bridge two of these and concept is a waste of time.
The fact a good 80% of the population isn’t educated to aesthetics, (which is so much more essential to our being human beings, it’s a philosophy leading to truth) doesn’t help.
I say we’ve taken up Bling to replace mislaid brutal forms posing as function, (Those stand alone latrines posing as Bus shelters come to mind) where even texture in the form of rough chiselled kantuni aping British rustication, an art form in itself, riddled our memory.
The truth is, we live a lie, we’re told we’re some gens, with some self-contauined history, art form or fully developed expressive and communicative skills and testimony. Rubbish.
We’re a small settlement of a confluence of different peoples trying to make sense. The key is a constant curious, dogged refinement of geometry, harmony, philology and basic rythm of visual and written language to serve all these.
Which we refuse fearing this spoils whatever it is we’ve supposed to have achieved. Pity.
And yes, Mintoff and labour are directly in the way of this profoundly required progress.
Then we wonder why everyone’s snappy, rough and on the defensive.
As for Karen, if you’re an artist, the least you’re going to expect is criticism.
The worst you can do is explain your work. That means you’ve given up on doing anything better.
MASSIVE RE-BRANDING HERE:
‘Lagna’ tal-Poplu
Healthy values = Healthy thinking = Healthy lifestyles.
Housework is not always necessarily tedious and boring and women don’t do it simply because they have nothing else going on in their lives. Housework can be particularly enjoyable especially in small doses (even to men – and I speak for myself) in the same way that washing, waxing, and vacuuming a car can be enjoyable.
Daphne not all women workers have cushy jobs (professional, clerical or with the Govt.) Most of the women workers have tough jobs especially those in the mass production factories. Members of my family who have tiring jobs look forward to the day to stop working and stay at home looking after the family. So in my opinion it depends on what kind of job one have and who is one’s employer.
[Daphne – They look forward to stopping work and staying home in the same way that you wish the weekend would go on forever…until it does. Even children look forward to the summer holidays, and then by the end of those three months, they’re itching to get back, not so much to school as to something with structure. Staying at home looks great to everyone, yes, even those with ‘cushy’ jobs. However cushy a job is, getting out of bed when you want to and lying on the sofa watching television all day is even cushier. But after a few months of that, any sane person would want to top themselves. Most men look forward to retirement, and then when they retire, they go into decline and some of them, who worked for decades in a stressful environment without getting a heart attack, get one in retirement, with the stress of adjusting to not having a routine or relevance. People are made to work and cannot survive in indolence. The success of Christianity in its purest form was its recognition of this, and its promotion of the work ethic. That is just a side observation. Indolence is a greater contributing factor to stress and depression than hard work is. The devil really does find work for idle hands.]
This also won L-Ghanja tal-Poplu .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAEcm8OrkrM
Where they liberal then?
L-Ghanja tal-Poplu is a festival where social themes are treated All songs are written in Maltese.Sometimes you would even hear ‘swear’ words in the songs and other times you would think we’re back in the 60’s.Sometimes you hear a funny song and at other times a song hits the right chord .I would say that at times it is Liberal and at times Conservative.
In this festival one could see Chiara singing It-Tlett ibliet or Ismaghni ftit habib ,Enzo Gusman It-Tejatru , Walter Micallef Siehbi fil-cupdoard tal-Kcina or Awissu, John Bundy Pajjiz tal-Mickey mouse, Claudette Pace trying her voice in Maltese Ghana (she was really good),and Corazon Il-lejla b’xejn.
Now YTC organised a children’s choir for free, they put up a great show about our country’s history through the centuries. No it was not a re-mix of Gensna . One could already spot the next Ira Losco or Fabrizio in that choir.
The winning song of this year dealt with the appreciation of a housewife or rather housework which many times is taken for granted. I also liked the song “Il-quccata,” it fits perfectly to a prominent politician.
I really like going to this festival ,what the judges choose is not necessarily what the voluntary organising committee or the audience approves.After all it’s a festival between friends.
I overheard a comment by a teacher sitting next to me, she told her husband that at her school there are little children who are dropped at seven in the morning and picked up at seven in the evening, I suppose their mothers are all carrier women.
Nowadays our families are walking on a tightrope, it’s difficult to keep balance between “L-Ufficju” and “Jien ma Nahdimx”.
My son heard the song today and found it hilarious. He does not really understand the concept of a housewife except for his grandmas. The best part of the lyrics is “ma ngerger qatt”. Say what?
I like that.
Yeah, “ma ngerger qatt”. As if. Full time housewives do practically nothing but. Just observe a gaggle of housewives at the corner grocery store in the morning. It’s invariably a bitch-fest.
My mother was/is a full-time housewife. Her constant complaining is the one primary factor that made me move out asap. I couldn’t take it any more, and I still can’t.
Give me a working woman anytime.
Yes, then they get to bitch at each other and leave the men alone. It is heaven for the men and hell for the women.
Veru li parti mill-poplu ghandu din il-vizjoni u l-identita tal-Ghanja tal-Poplu suppost li tirrifletti sentimenti minn fost il-poplu.
Li nara jistona huwa li din il-kanzunetta ma nkitbitx mill-Isqof Mercieq izda minn persuna li suppost ghanda artistrija, li suppost jiprevedi u jhoss sentiment li f’xi waqtiet jistghu jkunu prematuri ghas-socjeta ta’ zmienu.
Fil-kas ta’ din il-kazunetta ma kienx il-kas u r-rizultat huwa dak ta’ kantaliena xi ftit patetika li tiggustifika ragunar antikwat meta s-socjeta llum jehtigilha timxi f’direzzjoni opposta jekk ma tridx li tispicca f’xenarju ekonomiku li ma jkollux biex thallas il-pensjonijiet fost l-ohrajn.
As someone who worked all her adult life even while raising three children and who was recently forced by circumstances to stop working, I can offer my personal experience here.
Having your life revolve around the shopping, cooking and when is the toilet next due for a scrub is soul-destroying unless that is all you have ever known and aspired to.
It is perfectly possible to hold down a paid job (even part-time if necessary) and maintain a hygienic and adequately well-organised household.
And no, this does not mean your children subsist on smilies and chicken nuggets, if you get your act together.
The alternative is feeling like you pretty much exist rather than enjoy a full and well-rounded life, and in the process probably make you hell to live with.
Thankfully I have just started working again and the boost to my confidence and self-esteem is immeasurable.
My children (kids?) all agreed that it was high time and that I was much calmer and happier for it.