This article needs additional citations for verification .(April 2021) |
"The Gnu" | |
---|---|
Song by Flanders and Swann | |
Genre | Novelty song |
Composer(s) | Donald Swann |
Lyricist(s) | Michael Flanders |
"The Gnu" (sometimes known as "A Gnu", "I'm a Gnu" or "The Gnu Song") is a humorous song about a talking gnu by Flanders and Swann.
The word gnu is consistently pronounced in the song with two syllables as "g-noo", with the g clearly enunciated, and the n unpalatalised in contrast to the traditional "noo" or "nyoo". The song also plays on silent letters in other words such as "k-now" and "w-ho", and adds initial g's to various words beginning with n.
Michael Flanders introduces the piece with a humorous monologue explaining how he came to write it. He tells the story of a car – "great big flashy thing, with teeth; engine at both ends" – that is the bane of his existence, since it constantly occupies the one spot in the road outside his house where he can comfortably get from wheelchair to car and vice versa. The licence number, he explains, is 346 GNU, although registration marks using "GNU" in reverse format were not actually issued until 1958 [1] indicating a degree of poetic license being used in this tale. The song itself then begins, and consists of a brief piano introduction and two similar sung verses, each preceded by a verse spoken by Flanders. Donald Swann accompanies Flanders on the piano, but neither speaks nor sings during the song.
In the first verse, the singer is at the zoo when he meets a man who claims to know all the animals (like the habits of baboons and the number of quills on a porcupine), but misidentifies a gnu as a "helk"; the animal corrects him, further affirming that he is not a camel or a kangaroo, neither man or moose. In the second verse, he has taken furnished lodgings, and wakes up in the night to see a stuffed hunting trophy above his bed; he is trying to decide whether the animal's head could be a bison, an okapi or a hartebeest, when he seems to hear a voice, asserting indignantly that it is a "g-nu, a-g-nother g-nu" and threatening to sue for its misidentification.
Flanders and Swann first performed and recorded this song in their revue At the Drop of a Hat . It was released as a single on the Parlophone label in 1957 under the title "A Gnu", and produced by future Beatles producer George Martin.
The jocular mispronunciation of "g-noo" in the song has led, through familiarity, to this becoming a widespread pronunciation of the word "gnu" in British English. [2] [3]
Richard Stallman mentions "The Gnu" in connection with the naming of the GNU project in a 2002 interview. [4]
GNU is an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux. Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).
Wildebeest, also called gnu, are antelopes of the genus Connochaetes and native to Eastern and Southern Africa. They belong to the family Bovidae, which includes true antelopes, cattle, goats, sheep, and other even-toed horned ungulates. There are two species of wildebeest: the black wildebeest or white-tailed gnu, and the blue wildebeest or brindled gnu.
Flanders and Swann were a British comedy duo and musicians. Michael Flanders (1922–1975) was a lyricist, actor, and singer. He collaborated with Donald Swann (1923–1994), a composer and pianist, in writing and performing comic songs. They first worked together in a school revue in 1939 and eventually wrote more than 100 comic songs together.
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license.
Michael Henry Flanders was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known for his stage partnership with Donald Swann.
James Dixon Barnes is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer. His career, both as a solo performer and as the lead vocalist with the rock band Cold Chisel, has made him one of the most popular and best-selling Australian music artists of all time.
"I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am" is a 1910 British music hall song by Fred Murray and R. P. Weston. It was a signature song of the music hall star Harry Champion.
"The Water Is Wide" is a folk song of British origin. It remains popular in the 21st century. Cecil Sharp published the song in Folk Songs From Somerset (1906).
Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.
"Hey, Good Lookin'" is a 1951 song written and recorded by Hank Williams, and his version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2003, CMT voted the Hank Williams version No. 19 on CMT's 100 Greatest Songs of Country Music. Since its original 1951 recording it has been covered by a variety of artists.
"The Lost Chord" is a song composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred during Fred's last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877; Fred Sullivan died five days later. The lyric was written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter called "A Lost Chord", published in 1860 in The English Woman's Journal.
At the Drop of a Hat is a musical revue by Flanders and Swann, described by them as "an after-dinner farrago". In the show, they both sang on a nearly bare stage, accompanied by Swann on the piano. The songs were linked by contemporary social commentary, mostly by Flanders. After a long London run the show played in the US, Switzerland, and on tour in Britain.
"Montana" is a song composed by Frank Zappa for his 1973 LP Over-Nite Sensation. The last track on the album is one of Zappa's most famous and renowned compositions. It features backing vocals by Tina Turner and the Ikettes throughout the entire track, notably on the middle and ending sections.
Jackie James Barnes is an Australian drummer and singer. He has been performing since the age of four and has appeared on over 60 releases since 1990. He is the third child and only son of Jimmy Barnes and his wife Jane.
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" is a song recorded by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released as the first single from Nicks' debut solo album Bella Donna (1981). The track is the album's only song that was neither written nor co-written by Nicks. Written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell as a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song, Jimmy Iovine, who was also working for Stevie Nicks at the time, arranged for her to sing on it. Petty sings with Nicks in the chorus and bridge, while his entire band provides instrumentation with the exception of Ron Blair, who was replaced by bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn for the recording.
Emacs, originally named EMACS, is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor". Development of the first Emacs began in the mid-1970s, and work on GNU Emacs, directly descended from the original, is ongoing; its latest version is 29.4 , released June 2024.
Fresh Airs was a revue produced by Laurier Lister that opened in Brighton in 1955. It was the last in his series of "Airs" revues before Flanders & Swann started performing for themselves in At the Drop of a Hat.
"Love Me, I'm a Liberal" is a satirical political song by Phil Ochs, an American singer-songwriter. Originally released on his 1966 live album, Phil Ochs in Concert, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" was soon one of Ochs's most popular concert staples.
Solen glimmar blank och trind is Epistle No. 48 in the Swedish poet and performer Carl Michael Bellman's 1790 song collection, Fredman's Epistles. The Epistle is subtitled "Hvaruti afmålas Ulla Winblads hemresa från Hessingen i Mälaren en sommarmorgon 1769". One of his best-known and best-loved works, it depicts an early morning on Lake Mälaren, as the Rococo muse Ulla Winblad sails back home to Stockholm after a night spent partying on the lake. The composition is one of Bellman's two Bacchanalian lake-journeys, along with epistle 25, representing a venture into a social realism style.
Och Aye the G'nu is a 2017 children's album credited to Australian singer-songwriter, Jimmy Barnes and the Wiggles. It was first mentioned by Anthony Field in the Wiggles' 25th anniversary feature interview. The album was released in March 2017 and peaked at number 34 on the ARIA Charts.