Erik's song in the first scene
Can anyone tell me the name of the song which Erik has to sing before Gus' table in the dinner scene at the beginning of the film? Thanks!
share"Terang Bulan" which means "Clear Moon". It's an old Indonesian song. Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (the real Soldier of Orange) was born in Indonesia on 17 April 1917 (he will turn 90 this year).
shareThank you very much! I could never work out what he was saying and I wouldn't have guessed it was an Indonesian song.
shareActually, the tune of that song is exactly like the current Malaysian national anthem, titled Negaraku ("My country"). I got the shock of my life when Eric sang that song, thinking how the heck did a song from a Dutch movie back in the 70's have the same tune as Malaysia's national anthem. Well, anything can happen in a great movie......
shareYes, I was surprised by that too -- I recognized the tune from when I lived in Malaysia as a child, but the words were unfamiliar. It turns out that the song has quite an interesting history: a melody composed by a 19th-century Frenchman, gathering new lyrics to suit various contexts over the next century or so: the tune was adopted on the spur of the moment when the state of Perak decided they needed a national anthem, then it became a popular Indonesian folk tune called 'Terang Bulan', then it was popularized as 'Mamula Moon' by Felix Mendelssohn & His Hawaiian Serenaders in the 1940s, and finally it was chosen as the national anthem of Malaysia when that nation became independent in 1957. Apparently singing 'Terang Bulan' is now outlawed in Malaysia, as being disrespectful of the national anthem.
some think that it's Latin "I Ambula" means I'm walking
share