Befrielsearméns sång

Annotation — European Songs

Swedish. Anti-war.1 Befria Södern # BS-3 "For the struggling Vietnam" is an album released by The United FNL groups, the publisher Liberate the South. The disc cover, booklet and the envelope containing nothing but photos of Vietnamese, armed liberation struggle and the writer Jan Myrdal has written a small text on the disc's back where he notes that: "In its war of liberation against the invaders from the United States beat the Indochinese peoples now back, they go against victory. This is their justification for war against the rapacious imperialism is a historical turning point. That was the ruling of the world's most powerful industrial nation that gave his troops the order to crush some poor and vulnerable people who were about to fight his way free from colonialism. The weak defeat the strong!"2 A1 Till det kämpande Vietnam (To the Embattled Vietnam) A2 Sång om de indokinesiska folken (Song of the Indochinese Peoples) - Cambodia reference A3 Vietnams folk står enat (Vietnamese People Stand United) A4 Vilken president (Which President) - reference to Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Cambodia, Laos A5 Herr ambassadör (Mr. Ambassador) - anti-capitalist, anti-American, reference to Coke, Ford, Maxwell A6 Vart än vattnet leds följer fisken med (Wherever Water is Follow the Fish With)??? -about guerrilla warfare, mention of Saigon and Da Nang - presumably referring to the Viet Cong. A7 Befrielsearmens sång (Liberation Army Song) B1 Sången om freden (Song of Peace) B2 Demonstrantvisa (Demonstrator Display) - about the arrest of Sköld Peter Matthis at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration on 14 June 1965 - he was a Swedish liberal activist, a member of the Communist League Marxist-Leninists (KFML), and a co-founder of this group (FNL Grupperna). He became known as "the first Vietnamdemonstranten", mentioned in the lyrics. B3 Till fronten (To the Front) B4 Tango i Saigon (Tango in Saigon) - Nixon reference + Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (South Vietnamese president) + Dương Văn Minh (Big Minh) - South Vietnamese general under Diem. B5 Glanshammarsvisa (Glanshammarsgatan Show) - city in Sweden. B6 Rädda dollarn (Save the Dollar) - anti-capitalist, reference to Vietnam, de Gaulle, Nixon (about Dollar economy in Vietnam, like Japan after WW2) B7 Sången om svalorna (Song of the Swallows) B8 Befria Södern (Liberate the South)Sources1lars-daniel.se: Fnl tdkv↩2Wikipedia: Till det kämpande Vietnam↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: From the depths of the forests to the shore of the sea The people go forth to battle In the Liberation Army, we are sons of our people __________ Swedish: Ifrån skogarnas djup till havets strand folket går ut till kamp I Befrielsearmén är vi söner av vårt folk

Notes

Red labels headed "Befria Södern", "Till det kämpande Vietnam", BS 3 A / BS 3 B, "DFFG 1971", 33 rpm, stereo, NCB, with a Swedish rights notice reserving all rights to the producer and owner of the recording; 15 tracks with each song credited to a local FNL group (Maria, Vasa, Uppsala or Östermalms FNL-grupp), several marked "Trad.". The front cover shows a photograph of a young Vietnamese woman fighter with a rifle and pack crouching in a field; the back is headed "BS 3 STEREO (Kan också spelas Mono)" and carries an essay signed Jan Myrdal on the Indochinese peoples' victory over the United States and the Swedish FNL movement as "en mäktig folkrörelse", above a photograph of two people reading the "Vietnam" bulletin on a cobbled street, captioned "sånger från De Förenade FNL-grupperna". The back states that the performers are DFFG's song groups in Stockholm and Uppsala, that all texts…

About the artist

Song groups of De Förenade FNL-grupperna (DFFG / United NLF Groups), the Swedish solidarity movement with the Vietnamese NLF; active late 1960s to mid 1970s, releasing albums on the movement's own Befria Södern label. Based in Sweden (groups in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Uppsala). [Source: Wikipedia / Discogs]

Themes

Anti-War · NLF

In collections

European Songs · Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years]