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Don't
Dream It's Over was written, recorded and made
popular in the USA. But in 2001 NZ musicians voted it
"one of the top ten New Zealand song of all time," and
NZ folkies like to include in jam sessions
sometimes.
Here are some relatively easy folk chords for it. |
Moe,
Moe, Moemoe?
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| Here kore a roto Here kore a waho Hopukina te ua i o kapu ringa. Pakanga o mua Tukuna, ka ngaro. Puritia taku ringa Ngaro ana Te ara ki paerau.1 |
No limits within no limits without The downpour may be caught in your cupped hands. Battles ahead may be given up, lost. My hand is gripped, Always out of sight is The road to the meeting place of the dead |
| Moe, moe, moemoea Kore rawa e riro. Maru a po 2 E arai e te ao U mai, nau mai He taupare i a taua. E kore e angitu. |
Dream, dream, have visions; They won't all be achieved, Our dreams: They will be obstructed when the world bursts in, coming as a barrier between us. But it won't be successful. |
| 1. Paerau = gathering place of the dead. Rau or lau is an interesting old Austronesian word, with doun and rou meaning ‘leaves’ in Malay and Javanese, then l/rau became both leaves and hundred in the Pacific, presumably because a group of 100 things looked like leaves off a tree, and somehow becoming 'to gather in a net/basket/group' in Maori, presumably because you could catch 100 fish in a net, gather 100 berries in a basket or assemble 100 people in a wharenui. So I guess ‘pae-rau’ (on the horizon-gathered) => meeting place of the dead. 2. Maruapo = Maru a po = Shadows at night = Dreams.
C/9 Asus2
Here kore a roto, here kore a waho
F E
Hopukina te ua i o kapu ringa
C/9 Asus2
Pakanga o mua, Tukuna, ka ngaro
F
Puritia taku ringa
E
Ngaro ana te ara ki pae
F G
Moe moe moemoea
C/9 Asus2
Kore rawa e riro
F G
Maruapo
C/9 Asus2
E arai e te ao
F G
U mai, nau mai
C/9 Asus2
He kaupare i a taua
F G
E kore e angetu.
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Sound Clips
Why was this song so popular when it has phrases crammed into lines, very few rhyming words, and a continually descending tune that is difficult to sing unaccompanied?The answer seems to be in the intensity of feeling Neil Finn's band Crowded House put into expressing the sense of hope in a vast, alienated world, as the singer keeps tumbling down the keyboard, then triumphantly rising again, Hey now, hey now!
Listen here to the sharp, edgy guitar intro and the the expression in Neil's voice.
MP3 - 30sec, 95K. PLAYNow compare that with this insipid, mechanically-sung-and-played cover version by Paul Young.
MP3 - 30sec, 95K. PLAY
1987
Neil's song was popular in the USA when it came out in 1987 because it expressed hope in uncertain times. Just look back at some events of that year.
(May) Iraqi missiles killed 37 in an attack on a U.S. frigate in the Persian Gulf.
(July) Senior US govt officers testified they authorized the use of profits from illegal sales of arms to Iran to aid Contra terrorists.
(1st Oct) A severe earthquake struck Los Angeles, leaving 100 injured and six dead.
(19th Oct) There was a world-wide stock market crash.
Neil Finn
Neil Finn was born in 1958 at Te Awamutu. From a young age, his brother Tim (b. 1952) was a large musical influence, and sent him recordings of early jam sessions with fellow Sacred Heart College boarder Mike Chunn.
Teenager Neil & big
brother Tim in Split EnzWhile a teenager, he found an outlet for his music by joining the All'n Some Folk Club, which gave him the chance to write his own music. In 1975, Neil was critically acclaimed as the support act for the Split Enz Australia/New Zealand tour.In 1976 he received a call from Tim asking him to join Split Enz.I first saw Split Enz in November 1972 at Levi's Saloon in Auckland. Back then I was still a pimply schoolboy, but that performance and those first songs made a lasting impression on me. I went back to Te Awamutu and wrote "Split Enz" on my pencil case. I was a fan!
Neil Finn nearing 50 Neil brought a fresh perspective to Split Enz' songwriting, and he penned many of the band's major hits, most notably "I Got You," which virtually catapulted the Enz from obscurity to international fame.
Following the break up of Split Enz, Neil, Paul Hester and Nick Seymour created another band, which after they moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and stayed in a cramped North Hollywood home, was called Crowded House. They became a huge commercial success with their self-titled debut album. Their song "Don't Dream It's Over," reached #2 on the US pop charts in 1987.
Tim joined Crowded House for their 1991 tour. "Weather With You" broke Crowded House into the UK market, reaching #7 on their charts.
In 1996, Neil participated in Eddie Rayner's ENZSO project (the symphonic orchestration of the music of Split Enz). Not long after, while still at the height of their success, Neil decided to knock it on the head. Crowded House bowed out with a huge final concert for charity in front of 250,000 people on the steps of Sydney Opera House.
Since Crowded House broke up, Neil has released two solo albums entitled "Try whistling this," and "One Nil."
APRA's so-called Top New Zealand Songs Of All Time
In 2001, APRA (the Australasian Performing Right Association), invited its New Zealand members and an academy to vote on what they believed were New Zealand's top songs of all time.
The voting results were farcical. They showed mostly that APRA members had listened only to music written in the past 30 years, by white people.
Despite the huge international popularity of Maori songs, there were none among the top thirty, with Poi-E, which was a top hit for months, only ranked 37th, while the only other Maori song chosen was E Ipo at 87th.
The world famous Pokarekare Ana and the Gracie Fields/Bing Crosby year-long world chart topper, The Maori Farewell Song, Ha-ere Ra, never even got onto the list.
Neither were there any 19th century songs. God Defend New Zealand, which in the last 120 years has fought off dozens of other patriotic songs to win its place as our most popular national song, and On The Ball, the 1880s NZ rugby song, now sung by rugby teams all around the world, missed out also.
And APRA also declared Don't Dream It's Over, written and released in the USA, to be one of the top ten Australian songs of all time too, judging it to be almost as great as The Pub With No Beer.
For full details see Bruce Sergent's APRA Top 100 webpage.
Don't Dream It's Clover
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Eleanor Symonds There's
a feed-box within |
Published Feb 2002