I like that we all heard the way Toto inexpertly mangled the word “Serengeti” to fit the meter but the rest of the song goes so hard that we pretend it never happened.
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Except that they say Kilimanjaro rises "like Olympus", which is just another, smaller, mountain, "above the Serengeti", which it doesn't because Africa is really big and those places are not near each other. It's a great song, but that whole line is just painfully bad.
seriously i am confused. people are taking this at face value and i have no idea what hank means by this at all. he says /sɛrənɡɛti/, which is what wikipedia lists as the correct pronunciation, and the etymology of the word is unknown/contentious so it’s not like hank is criticizing a bad
anglization of the word- and even if that’s what he was doing, it appears to be the common pronunciation. no one complains about television not being pronounced as /telewisjon/.
people change where the stress pattern is in words for music all the time. besides, to me it sounds like he says /'sɛrənˌɡɛti/, just swapping the primary and secondary stress. the final /ti/ syllable is long, yes, but it’s still fairly relaxed and i wouldn’t call it stressed
It is pretty awkward now that you mention it, but listening I’m actually pretty impressed with how well the singer sells it. Pesky extra syllables? No sweat, this dude’s a pro.
Words get manipulated in songs all the time to fit the meter. There is nothing special about the word Serengeti in that regard. Only difference is that people might not know how it is normally pronounced so in that regard it should actually stick out less compared to well known words that are bent.
Both of my adult-lite children loved this song so much when they were small that it honestly doesn’t matter to me how many parts of it are off. Few things bring me as much joy as the memory of them snapping along with their eyes closed.
You can interpret it many ways. If it doesn't make sense to you that's fine.
But in the words of one of the composers "A white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he's never been there, he can only tell what he's seen on TV or remembers in the past."
This is in part why some of it doesn't make sense. Because primarily it's about caring/longing for something you don't know about or haven't experienced.
Adjusting the phrasing to fit the meter is pretty common in vocals, and Serengeti is pronounced pretty close to correctly. It’s Kilimanjaro that sounds mangled to me.
So you can use both 'have' and 'had' for a verb. It's the past perfect tense. As in "I had not done that before"
It's an odd usage but the past perfect tense can be used to express a wish "I wish I had done that thing".
So in this case he wants to do the things they never got to do in the past.
My fave misheard lyrics belong to my then 10 or 11 yr old who sang with all her might, “I guess it rains down in Africa.” Petition to formerly change the lyrics, thank you.
I genuinely thought it was "I miss the rains down in Africa". I only learned the real lyrics after the Internet came along and finally told me I had been wrong all this time.
All they had to do was say "Amboseli" instead, it is the national park right next to Kilimanjaro, which rises above it. It makes me mad every time I hear it that they used Serengeti when they didn't have to and Amboseli would have fit into the song perfectly.
It's like how people say "gee-tar" because "guitar" is hard to fit into meter. Some will opt for "six string" for the same reason (I mean, how else would you say it in Summer of '69 anyway?)
I believe the perspective of the song is from someone who has never actually been to Africa. No idea of that's true but inexpertly might be exactly what they were going for
Alanis Morrisette supremely butchers the accents on words and syllables to cram them into the melody and somehow it still works because she's Alanis Morissette
The lyric is the other way around, “the way Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus”.
Mt. Olympus is also a real place in Greece, but I think the intention was to compare Kilimanjaro with the mythical Olympus, home of the Greek gods etc.
As a kid I always thought it was “a lepress”, which I assumed to mean a female leopard. Despite it making no sense in context, I still can’t not hear it that way.
From Vancouver you can see Mt Rainier which is 200+ miles away. And Kilimanjaro is a lot taller than Rainier. But yeah I don't think I'd ever describe it as rising above.
I think it’s meant to be a comparison to the mythic Olympus. The first thing I noticed about Kilimanjaro was how imposing it is. It is terrifyingly, otherworldly huge. The photos (not mine↓) where it takes up a huge chunk of the sky is not foreshortening or an illusion. That’s actually how it looks.
the lyrics, when read as the point-of-view as someone that has been bitten by a werewolf, tell a compelling narrative of someone returning to Africa to find a possible cure.
As someone who plays drums and has this on the AirPods drum practice playlist, I do not forget and neither do I forgive. I just put on hold the line after it shuffles into view.
You mean to tell me there's more words in this song than, "I bless the rains down in Africa"?!? Kidding, but I think it's an expertly planned memory lapse by Toto.
Exactly! "Serengeti" is closer to correct. Also, he pronounces several common English words strangely too. He had a meter, and he had some lyrics, and he was determined to get them fit no matter what. Lol.
Two things. One, it's quite possible the guy who wrote the song (or the singer) had never heard it pronounced before. This was '81 or whatever, and they were, well, Toto.
Two, any excuse to post my favorite video on this topic, which I'm sure you've seen:
a grad school colleague who'd done some fieldwork in eastern Africa was more upset about the song putting Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti right next to each other.
I only just learned like, last year, that it's NOT "I test the waves down in AAAAAAfricaaaaaa..."
I totally thought they were surfers.
I'm not convinced my way isn't better either.
I thought it was "I miss the rains" probably because I was introduced to the song at the same time in my young life as "I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain."
but Olympus isn't just a mountain, it's the home of the Greek pantheon. I've always taken that it's about the magnificence of Kilimanjaro and how it's presence inspires awe and reverence in a spiritual way
A lot of cultural criticism of this era assumes that listeners even heard the lyrics. Honestly I don’t think I heard lyrics clearly until the iPod was invented. Until then people were at the mercy of bad car stereos, boom boxes and sony walkman over the ear headphones.
I've always seen the meter of that line as being pure chutzpah. "Let's see how many syllables we can pack into a line before someone says something". "Does it scan"? "Do I care"?
Kim Mitchell's "Patio Lanterns" crams the phrase "stuck on Joy, that was her name" into four beats of 4/4 time, which I've long thought was quite the meter-busting feat.
It's a song about the idea of Africa as a dreamlike mythical place all human life rose from, rather than the physical continent.
Like how Estelle uses a single breath to ask Kanye to "Take [her] to New York, I'd love to see LA" in American Boy - about the idea of location, not the reality.
Having written a few 'parody' songs in my time (existing song with new lyrics), sometimes you just have to get loose with vocab to make things work. We can't all be Weird Al.
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I love it
I’ve also seen them live twice haha
"X rises like Y above Z" What two things are being compared?
Does the Serengeti have mountains?
(tl;dr: they know, they agree, their bad)
All good though, love that song,
(Yeah, I know😉).
But in the words of one of the composers "A white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he's never been there, he can only tell what he's seen on TV or remembers in the past."
It's an odd usage but the past perfect tense can be used to express a wish "I wish I had done that thing".
So in this case he wants to do the things they never got to do in the past.
https://youtu.be/4echFkqgwZo?si=0q4DRDfr5Brd_CJV&t=6140
(full episode starts here
https://youtu.be/4echFkqgwZo?si=vTS3OclA5irxkMZB&t=5289)
[corrected links--messed up previous reply sorry]
My problem with that lyric is that Kilimanjaro is taller than Olympus, so the comparison is actually an insult.
Mt. Olympus is also a real place in Greece, but I think the intention was to compare Kilimanjaro with the mythical Olympus, home of the Greek gods etc.
i have never seen olympus rising over any desert actually
and the weather
and how good your eyes are
"Sure as a very large mountain rises like a mountain half its size above a grassland that's nowhere near it."
Also there was a European and African queen version but those were less popular.
Fun word for you if you don't know it--Prosody. It's also why Katy Perry singing "Unconditional(ly)" sounds so fucked up 👉😎👉
I blame the relatively poor radio quality. The list of misapprehended lyric lines is pretty epic.
Two, any excuse to post my favorite video on this topic, which I'm sure you've seen:
I’ve never seen that. 😂 Thanks.
So fabulous!
I disliked that song since I first heard it as a high sch student.
After college I moved from my home in the U.S. to South Africa.(*)
From that point on I absolutely hated it.
(*)South Africa btw is a country, not a region.
It's not in the Serengeti anyway.
Ever heard of poetic license ?
#NotEverythingNeedsToBeFactChecked
I totally thought they were surfers.
I'm not convinced my way isn't better either.
It's about majesty and not height.
https://youtu.be/yE4pPzrkgsM?si=8joV1BtNgSVwrF9c
Like how Estelle uses a single breath to ask Kanye to "Take [her] to New York, I'd love to see LA" in American Boy - about the idea of location, not the reality.