Repetune - The Songs of our Heads

Manu Chao - Bongo Bong

Writing by Segal on Tuesday, 2 of October , 2007 at 11:04 pm

Listen to the first 30 seconds

It starts innocuously enough. An electronic chime, similar to the one used to alert Kmart shoppers of the hour’s great deal, peals staccato to announce the beginning of a bar of music. Repeated roughly 88 times during the song, that chime becomes the very bane of my ears, creating an environment in which I expect someone to come on the scene and turn it off like an early morning car alarm. The same tone, however, is what holds this concoction together and ultimately thrusts it from the realm of reheated, college coed-ready world pop fluf into an elevation reserved solely for the musical giants of our time. It’s A Small World. Yankee Doodle. Bongo Bong. The holy trinity of earworms.

This song has so many things working in its favor besides the chime, though. Found separately among the ruins of lesser records, the elements of reggae, son, and Afropop which get white people dancing awkwardly are finally featured in a single track. The litmus test of any song shouldn’t be “Can you dance to it?”, though. It should be “Can you drive to it?”. I am here inside your monitor, several lane change miscalculations and near-misses with curbs later, to affirm upon The Holy Bible*, that yes, automotive skanking is not only possible, it’s mandatory. The reasons why: awesome shoop-shoop girl backup, two chords, dubby bassline, a random horn sample that sounds like it’s from a Papa Wemba outtake, and the crowning achievement, perfectly discernible lyrics that make complete sense and absolutely no sense, all at once. 

Every monkey like to be in my place instead of me
But I’m the king of bongo, baby, I’m the king of bongo bong

Sure, this could be a firm indictment of urban culture vis a vis the cultural contributions of Europe’s far-flung villages. More likely, though, it’s just a song about a monkey that really likes to play the bongos.

The beauty lies in how a simple group of common tropes managed to find their way to the same party. It’s like that movie 200 Cigarettes except it doesn’t suck and doesn’t involve Kate Hudson showing that she has no discernable acting talent. This is the distillation of a hundred years of indigenous music, boiled down to the pure ethanol of bliss.

* the best album by Manic Street Preachers.

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Category: Manu Chao

What is a repetune?

It has happened to us all. For any reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, some obscure song we have heard but try to avoid manages to sneak itself into our head. It does nothing but repeat in our head over and over until one day, we realize it is gone. Then it only comes back again. These are those songs. These are repetunes.