Imagine a little boy in his mid-fifties, who remembers tunes from five decades ago and seeks them out decades later after growing up, relying only on the limited knowledge from the past.
I remember a handful of songs from the time I was in Kindergarten.
The year was 1962.
My late father had just returned from a year long training-tour of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
As a scientist at Atomic Energy Establishment, Dept. of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India, he had been sent to be trained in Warsaw, Poland.
He also officially visited Moscow and Leningrad, USSR; Berlin and Leipzig, East Germany and Prague, Czechoslovakia.
(some of those countries don’t even exist anymore!)
He brought back a lot of gadgets and toys from behind the Iron Curtain.
One of them was a Polish ZRK Melodia two-speed bidirectional spool-to-spool tape recorder with vacuum tube electronics.
The beast was 16½” x 12½” x 7.8” and weighed 20 kg.
| 1960 ZRK Melodia two-speed bidirectional spool-to-spool tape recorder with vacuum tube electronics. Made in Poland. |
I must have listened to the recordings my father made on tape, countless times, when I had barely started going to school.
Over four decades the tape recorder and its tapes vanished from my life, but the tunes lingered in the head.
However, the toughest song to identify in the present day, was a song I could only remember in my childish lisp as “Noriya Noriya”!
I have carried that tune in my head for decades and sought it in all the countries I've lived in, after growing up (The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the UK).
I learned to speak Dutch, German and Swedish.
Could the words be, “Norje Norje”, which means “the North, the North” in Norwegian and Swedish?
No, that was not the song !
Then, suddenly the clouds cleared !
Watching a French movie, La vie en rose(2007), I found the song fifty years later, on Fri. 23rd March 2012 !!
The words of the song were: “Non, rien de rien”.
It was a 1960 French Song by the French singer and cultural icon, Miss. Édith Piaf (1915-1963).
She was France's national popular singer, and one of France's greatest international stars.
The title of the song is “Non, je ne regrette rien”.
It means, “No, I don't regret anything” -- composed by Charles Dumont, with lyrics written by Michel Vaucaire in 1956.
Édith Piaf recorded it in 1960, dedicating her recording to the French Foreign Legion.
The song, sat seven weeks atop the French Singles & Airplay Reviews chart.
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
C'est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé !
Avec mes souvenirs
J'ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux !
Balayées les amours
Et tous leurs trémolos
Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi
Imagine my pure glee !!! Human memory can be so associative!
For associated with that old almost forgotten melody, were
the never again heard drones of Douglas DC-3 Dakotas and DC-4 Skymasters,
the turbocompound thunder of Lockheed Super Constellations,
the melodious turboprops of Fokker Friendships, Vickers Viscounts and Hawker-Siddeley 748s of my childhood.
And tightly coupled with the now vintage roar of these aircraft skimming the rooftop of my 3-storey building, were these wonderful musical memories of my childhood.
For a few magical moments, it was yesterday once more !