Saturday 29 February 2020

Convoluted connections, #394 in a series



What links this song...


...with this...


...and this one?


French songwriter and producer Daniel Vangarde began as an avant-garde synthesizer music pioneer in the early 1970s, and released a pseudo-Japanese album masquerading as a band called the Yamasuki Singers. Once the Disco boom began, however, he went on to write and produce some of the biggest (and cheesiest) hits of the era, including Ottowan's D.I.S.C.O., and local hits in France with artistes such as Rocky et Vandella, The Great Disco Bouzouki Band, Sheila (later of B Devotion fame), and the Soul Iberica Band.

He also launched the Gibson Brothers onto an unsuspecting world.

Along the way, he was also responsible for the song originally titled Aieaoa, that was later given Swahili lyrics and re-named Aie a Mwana. In the 1980s, a trio of wild-child girls, who were hanging around with The Sex Pistols at the time, decided to record it as a demo. While doing so, they improvised the lyrics to rhyme with "banana" - and lo and behold, Bananarama was born!

Finally - what possible connection is there with song #3?

Well... Mr Vangarde was actually born Daniel Bangalter. His son Thomas, who with daddy's encouragement became an electronic music maestro in his own right, is one half of the enigmatic synthpop duo Daft Punk!

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, they say...

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