Monday, March 23, 2009

Yalla Yalla - New CRACKER Video!

From the forthcoming (May 5th, 2009) album, Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey. Preorder it here. This is the first video, Yalla Yalla.



From the Youtube page, by David Lowrey:

"Yalla" is a common arabic expression, loosely meaning "hurry up" and often used by american soldiers in place of "hurry up" or "let's go". Like every war Iraq war soldiers have developed their own unique slang based on their experiences. Oftentimes these slang words creep into our nations vocabulary many years after the original conflict. ."Yalla" or "Yalla Yalla" may not become as common as RADAR, AWOL or SNAFU but it will certainly be used by soldiers for many years to come. This song takes no position on the war in Iraq*. It is a exploration and a celebration of a certain kind of bravado and swagger one finds in the speech of soldiers. I find it nicely matches the kind of swagger often exhibited by rock, blues and hip hop singers. I suppose that is why it was so much fun (and relatively easy) to take this arcane slang and anacronyms and build a song out of it. If I got some of it wrong, well i apologize. There seemed to be some disagreement among my small sample of soldiers (and marines) about the pronunciation or precise meaning of some of the terms i use. case in point whether anyone really refers to Camp Anaconda as Bombaconda, or the precise definition (and spelling!) of a "pogue". My questioning at the Atlanta airport set off a heated argument between two servicemen. It's all in good fun, so don't kick my ass. please.

Finally most of this footage was taken from YouTube. Who knew the internets were full of soldiers marines, sailors and airmen dancing, lip syncing and headbanging to their favorite music? IF YOU ARE IN THIS AND DON"T WANT TO BE: politely write us and we will edit you out.

David Lowery

* Due diligence: I opposed the war in Iraq. I viewed it as a distraction from the fight in Afghanistan. However now that we are in Iraq I believe we shouldn't leave until there is a stable and humane government in that country. I'll leave the notions of timetables, troop levels etc etc to the professionals.

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