A question for all those of my friends who AREN'T from Italy, America, Australia or Britain

[fpb]

One doesn't, in general, think of popular music as a vehicle for patriotism. But apart from the USA, where nobody is ashamed of waving the flag, there have been beautiful patriotic songs from Australia -

- and, more surprisingly, from Italy:

I reckon that part of the reason why this is so surprising is the central position of Britain in modern and especially pop culture. British singers have influenced everyone and are visible from everywhere - even the wretched Amy Winehouse's slow suicide has been front-page news across the world, whereas it would at best have got a paragraph on page 13 had she been Dutch or Taiwanese. Now, the position of any British singer you care to mention towards Britain or England is inevitably acidic and oppositional; the closest one gets to patriotism is the very ambiguous claim made for London - and London alone - in the Clash's London Calling. But people like Springsteen in the States and De Gregori among us are not only leading singers, but leading lights of the left. I think there is something specific and local that makes it impossible for an English artist to claim the identity and values of his country as a number of Americans and Italians do.

Having said that, I want to know whether any other countries have seen the same kind of thing: LEADING local singers, mind you, not little-known hacks, writing SUCCESSFUL songs in praise of their country and/or their people? I doubt Germany is up to it yet, but France? Spain? other European countries? India? China? anywhere?

Comments

[filialucis]

I believe that this fits your criteria. It's about twenty years old at this point, but has been described as Austria's "secret national anthem" and the country's answer to Waltzing Matilda. Don't ask me to transcribe the words because I can't even make them out about 30% of the time, but the tenor of the lyrics is wry and a little noir, possibly for reasons of national character and possibly for the same reason that you suspect Germany isn't "up to it yet"... but what is significant is that the notion of taking pride in one's country occurs in them. Something that is rarely enough articulated in a culture that still collectively feels uneasy about whether it can afford the luxury of patriotism.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It's also a very nice bit of music, which is another thing that means something.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, and the two Italian songs are also both about twenty years old - but Viva l'Italia in particular is more popular than ever. They were written in the shadow of the horrors of mafia and terrorist violence in the seventies, with a growing sense that we were all in the same boat and that there was something worth saving about Italy and freedom; and it has come back to popularity because of the increasingly degenerate Berlusconi-Bossi "leadership".