Saigon Battle Children 1972
1998 · Festival Mushroom 336362 · Brisbane, Australia
- Artist
- Elixir
- Title
- Saigon Battle Children 1972
- Release
- Elixir
- Year
- 1998
- Label
- Festival Mushroom # 336362
- Format
- CD · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- Brisbane, Australia
- Songwriter
- Martin Challis, Katie Noonan, Nick Stewart
- Genre
- Jazz · Jazz
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation — Australian & New Zealand Songs
Jazz group formed in 1997 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The line-up featured: Katie Noonan (vocals), Nick Stewart (guitar), River Petein (alto saxophone), Martin Challis (poetry), and Isaac Hurren (tenor saxophone). This album featured the anti-war song "Saigon Battle Children 1972" (Festival Mushroom Records # 336362), in which the narrator made a comparison to their daily life with that of a child in the Vietnam War. As the narrator enjoyed the taste of "cashew and walnut", the child ate "the bones of your neightbours' dog". As the child "went without feet, a landmine exploding", the narrator "sprained an ankle at basketball". The line "while your skin seared from the heat of warfare" may be a reference to chemical weapon Napalm B - a jellied gasoline mixture, with polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline. Declared a war-crime since 1980, the US government extensively used this weapon during the Vietnam conflict, dropping 388,000 tons on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.123 As the child suffered from a napalm attack, the narrator was "feeling the warmth of a shopping centre". Sources1Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩2Times Higher Education: Napalm an american…
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
Annotation — Jazz Songs
Jazz group formed in 1997 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The line-up featured: Katie Noonan (vocals), Nick Stewart (guitar), River Petein (alto saxophone), Martin Challis (poetry), and Isaac Hurren (tenor saxophone). This album featured the anti-war song "Saigon Battle Children 1972" (Festival Mushroom Records # 336362), in which the narrator made a comparison to their daily life with that of a child in the Vietnam War. As the narrator enjoyed the taste of "cashew and walnut", the child ate "the bones of your neightbours' dog". As the child "went without feet, a landmine exploding", the narrator "sprained an ankle at basketball". The line "while your skin seared from the heat of warfare" may be a reference to chemical weapon Napalm B - a jellied gasoline mixture, with polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline. Declared a war-crime since 1980, the US government extensively used this weapon during the Vietnam conflict, dropping 388,000 tons on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.123 As the child suffered from a napalm attack, the narrator was "feeling the warmth of a shopping centre".Sources1Napalm: An American Biography (Robert M. Neer, 2013)↩2Times Higher Education: Napalm an american…
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Elixir - jazz group formed 1997 in Brisbane, Queensland: Katie Noonan (vocals), Nick Stewart (guitar), River Petein (alto saxophone), Martin Challis (poetry) and Isaac Hurren (tenor saxophone).
Themes
Child · Vietnamese Children · Napalm · Landmine · Civilian Casualties · Anti-War