Rick Wakeman and Amanda Whiting close out the series

Add to Playlist

In the series finale of Add to Playlist, hosts Geoffrey Boakye and Anna Phoebe are joined by musical specialists Rick Wakeman and Amanda Whi

Key takeaways

• Aya Nakamura's song 'Pookie' utilizes French slang with Romany roots meaning an informer.
• Rick Wakeman serves as an ambassador for Animals Asia to help save moon bears in China and Vietnam.

Main topics

• Etymology of slang in pop music
• Musical motifs and cellular composition

Notable quotes

A scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly and he's also known as a buster.

Conclusion

The episode provides a rich tapestry of musical history, demonstrating

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:11) Hello and welcome to the final episode in the current series of Add to Playlist. I'm Geoffrey Boakye. Speaker 4 (0:16) And I'm Anna Phoebe. Speaker 6 (0:17) Together, we are your hosts for this exploration and celebration of musical connections. Speaker 4 (0:22) Geoffrey, remind us one final time how it all works. Speaker 6 (0:25) All right, let's go. On Add to Playlist, we lovingly build, explore and discuss a totally unique playlist of five tracks per episode. However, each piece of music must be linked to the one that came before it through a choice nugget piece of information. It's a game which takes us far wide and deep into music history, spanning a range of artists, eras and genres. And Speaker 4 (0:47) every episode, we're joined by two musical specialists ready to roll up their sleeves and dive in. It's a huge delight to welcome back to the studio for the fourth time, the pianist, keyboard player, composer extraordinaire and self-proclaimed grumpy old man, Rick Wakeman. Speaker 1 (1:04) Yeah, grumpy. You're Speaker 4 (1:05) the greatest grumpy old man I've ever met, aren't you? No, you can't Speaker 1 (1:08) be grumpy on Add to Playlist. You can't be. Speaker 1 (1:13) There you go. Speaker 4 (1:14) Now, we don't have time to go into everything you're doing, but you've got a book out. Speaker 1 (1:17) Yeah. Speaker 4 (1:17) You've got an album coming out in October. You've got a huge tour next year. Yeah. And you're about to go off and perform for some bears in a sanctuary. Speaker 1 (1:26) Yeah. I'm an ambassador for Animals Asia, and we save moon bears from the bear bile trade because they're brutally... I won't go into the details, but we managed to save a lot. And we've got a sanctuary in China, two in China, and we've got one in Vietnam. And the bears, there's about 300 bears there, which we've saved, who all have a wonderful time. They're like kids. You can check it out online. They're wonderful. And what we're doing to raise awareness, I'm going down to Vietnam, the building of a stage just outside the... piano on the top, and I'm doing a recital just for the bears. No humans. Speaker 4 (2:02) So what are you going to play for these bears? And do they like music? I Speaker 1 (2:06) have put together some music especially for them. I have written some music for some of the more famous bears that have been down there. Go on. Speaker 4 (2:12) You know I'm going to ask you. I love this so much. It's all about Speaker 1 (2:14) composing for bears. Do you know, off the top of my head... Speaker 3 (2:32) Oh. Speaker 1 (2:34) What's going to happen is I'm going to walk on the stage, start playing, all the bears will come over and go, oh, no, it's him again. We've heard this one. Yeah, we've heard this exactly. Thank Speaker 4 (2:42) you so much and great to have you back. Speaker 6 (2:45) And it's a huge welcome back to the classically trained, pioneering Welsh jazz harpist and composer, Amanda Whiting. Speaker 6 (2:55) Rick gave you a fanfare there. Sorry. Thank Speaker 5 (2:57) you. I'm just, I want to go with Rick to play for the bears. You Speaker 6 (3:00) have got your harp with you. You drove this thing all the way up here from Wales this morning. We've Speaker 5 (3:05) lost a few strings along the way. Come Speaker 6 (3:06) on. Speaker 4 (3:28) It's one of those pieces, Brubeck is just... Incredible. Listen, welcome to you both, Amanda and Rick. Speaker 6 (3:35) So, to kick off this final episode in the series, we're picking up where we left off last time. And in this case, it was this classic from 1999. Speaker 4 (3:55) No Scrubs by the American Girl Group, TLC. That Speaker 6 (3:58) was my choice, Anna. So, where would you like to take us for our opening track in the final episode of the series? And how does it link back? to the lack of scrubs. I'm Speaker 4 (4:08) interested in modern songs that popularise ancient slang. I'm thinking about the word scrubs in the TLC song. A scrub being a slang for a man who is unsuccessful, aimless, broke, or just generally not worth dating in their eyes, not mine. TLC famously defined him in the lyric as a scrub is a guy that thinks he's fly and he's also known as a buster. So they were credited for popularising the word scrubs, but the word has much... much older origins than contemporary culture in America, we are going to start our etymology tour back in the 16th century. Let's go. In the 1500s, scrub originally was used to describe cattle when it was considered a bit stunted or inferior. And then that was extended to include people who are low status. We go to the late 1600s, a scrub was tavern slang for someone who didn't want to pay for a round of drinks or pay for their fair share. We're going to roll forward then to the 1990s. Scrub became street slang for a loser and then TLC turned that term into a global pop catchphrase. So for my choice, I'm going to a contemporary Marleyan French singer who, like TLC, takes archaic slang and uses it in a completely modern context. Speaker 3 (5:45) Pookie Speaker 4 (5:47) by the French Marlion singer Aya Nakamura from her 2018 album Nakamura. Speaker 4 (6:03) Pookie, any ideas what this means? Rick? Speaker 1 (6:06) When I saw Pookie, I thought, I know this, because Pookie was actually, three seasons ago, centre forward for Norwich City Football Club. Speaker 4 (6:16) No. No, we're not going down the rabbit hole. And he Speaker 1 (6:18) scored a lot of goals. You think it's an ode to Pookie, yeah? And I thought it was an ode to Pookie the footballer. Is he right? Speaker 4 (6:25) I don't Speaker 6 (6:26) know. Speaker 4 (6:26) Is Pookie the football player a million-dollar baby? I don't know. OK, I'm going to stop you there, Rick, before we go down a rabbit hole. Because in the UK, Pookie is kind of a playful term of endearment or affectionate nickname for someone, like a romantic partner or a close friend or a child or a pet. But here, Pookie... is a snitch or an informer. And it comes from the word Poucave, French slang with Romany roots. And the Romany language itself has a history stretching back centuries. So Pouki is actually, it's got a long lineage going back, you know, maybe a thousand years. So like TLC, Scrubs, which dates back to the 16th century, Pouki possibly dates back a thousand years. Incredible. Going back to my choice, Aya Nakamura, the more I read about her, the more I found out that actually... She's quite a controversial figure in France. I want to give some background about her. In 2019, the New York Times described her as one of the most important acts in Europe now, musically and socially. She is one of the most successful French artists in the world. Her debut album was certified diamond in France, sold more than 1.2 million copies, and she is the first African musician to have a video with over a billion views. Speaker 3 (7:47) So Speaker 4 (7:47) she's a huge artist. She was born in 1995 in Bamako, Mali, and she moved to France as a child growing up just outside Paris. She comes from a Griot family, a West African tradition of storytellers, poets and musicians. But she always talks about doing something different with her music. Speaker 3 (8:22) So there's lyrics, Speaker 4 (8:23) you know, she says about you hate that I'm big mouth, blah, blah, blah. Close the door, you've Speaker 3 (8:26) got Speaker 4 (8:26) a snitch by your side. When I was looking about what her translation of Pookie and meaning of Pookie in this song, there are so many different meanings that have come up on those Reddit files. Some people say Le Side is actually the name of her gang. So Pookie dans side means there's a snitch in your team. Watch out. She is a controversial figure. Her lyrics in particular have been the subject of a lot of debate. in the country, far-right politicians, such as far-right commentator and politician Eric Zemmour, called her lyrics a foreign language and that her use of slang devalues the French language. There were backlashes around the 2024 Paris Olympics when it was decided that she was going to perform. There were racist protests. Even politician Marine Le Pen was saying it was a provocation and a humiliation for France. I mean, there's a lot of strong language about Aya as an artist. Musically, Amanda, I want to come to you. What are you hearing when you hear this track? Musically, I mean, she's really interesting because something that sounds Speaker 5 (9:22) quite simple, you know, that... Speaker 5 (9:26) You know, that's hypnotic. Our body locks in with that groove. It keeps us still, but her inflection on the words and her rhythmical punctuation of her words keeps the ear really interested. Speaker 4 (9:37) Yeah, because it's based around F sharp minor, I think, isn't it? There's C sharp minor, F sharp minor, D major, C sharp major, right? Yeah, she's got this riff. The bass line. Is that the bass line? Speaker 5 (9:45) Yeah, and also the rhythm is quite sparse. Everything's quite sparse about it. So I was just thinking, you know, that accompaniment is quite predictable for the body to lock in and dance with. Are you hearing trademarks of Afrobeat, Speaker 4 (9:57) Rick? Are you hearing any other sort of cultural references? There's a Speaker 1 (10:00) mixture of a lot in there. What