OF THE
TIMES
Brown Girl in The Ring is featured in the film Touching the Void when mountaineer Joe Simpson worries he is succumbing to madness or death. He recalls: "I remember thinking, bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M"....[Link]And I remember thinking when watching that film, against all odds, Boney M probably saved his life.
Поющие гитары - Синий иней....[Link]And every Russian celeb feels obligated to cover it - my wife is from that cultural sphere, thus I have plenty of exposure to Russian pop music ...
'Brown Girl in The Ring' is a traditional children's song from the West Indies...[Link]The text suggested something like this. The peculiar grammar and the mentioning of a drought suggested a non-British origin of the lyrics. But the tunes might as well be copied from a nursery rhyme, even an English one. Such simple tunes travel fastest.
Although, my very white British uncle claimed to have also sung the song when he was a child, Smithsonian Folkways, Alan Lomax etc, don't seem to have any record of that kind of thing in their 'A-sailor-went-to-sea-sea-sea, etc' Brit kiddy tune archive, so whether he was having a phantom memory or not, I've no idea.
Which is an interesting topic by itself. They have quite a large pool of "original" and indigenous music, but about a third of the stuff I hear is a cover of Western music. And because of the language barrier, many Russians are unaware of the copy-cat nature of larger parts of their culture.Being generally a big fan of quality cheap pop music, I tend to look out for that kind of thing, although I have great difficulty finding Russian and Greek stuff etc, mainly 'cause of the alphabet problem.
Plum plum.