"Anyone for Demis?" wasn’t the only question posed by this trawl through some of the foreign – not American - popular music that’s been hugged to our collective bosom. That the large, hirsute, kaftan-shrouded Greek wonder that’s Demis Roussos was popular is obvious. He landed in the Top 10 in 1975 with “Happy to be on an Island in the Sun” and became a chart regular for the next two years. Everyone was for Demis. The other poser was the self-cancelling, “Now that pop music’s gone global, has the appeal of the foreign pop song gone forever?”
Thankfully, this wasn’t the sniggersome jaunt through a bunch of novelty one-hit wonders it could’ve been. But, despite some token get-out-clause castigation for laughing at foreign pop, it chucked in some chuckles anyway.
A line was drawn from the 1940s craze for Hawaiian music to Shakira. It ran through the Third Man theme, the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir, calypso, Nina and Frederik, the Singing Nun, Eurovision, Nana Mouskouri, the Red Army Choir, Serge Gainsbourg's “Je t’aime”, “Y viva Espagna”, Demis Roussos, Gheorghe Zamfir, Incantation, the Gypsy Kings, and drew a halt at Paul Simon's Graceland and the Bhundu Boys - with a postscript on the invention of world music, today’s ubiquitous salsa classes and Shakira. A rum bunch, and shoehorning them into one programme said little more than that every now and then, we love a fresh spin on pop.
Musing on Nana Mouskouri, contributor Jonny Trunk said, “She’s not this sexual dynamo – or doesn't look like one anyway.” Rolf Harris leering at Germany’s Kessler Twins was priceless. As was the fresh-to-Britain calypso star Lord Kitchener being asked if he was the best. Of course, he said yes. Alan Whicker described calypso as a “pungent thing, rich in innuendo”.
The much-told story of the Singing Nun is tragic. Clips of fans under the spell of Demis Roussos’s sexual power were extraordinary. But how many times do we have to see Alison Steadman’s Beverley, in Abigail’s Party, delivering the Demis Roussos spiel?
Watch Demis Roussos and Nana Mouskouri singing “Happy to be on an Island in the Sun” as a duet
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Way more charming was the story of Sheffield’s Doreena Sugundo. She was so taken with Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders that, at age 17, she travelled to Hull in an attempt to join the band. She became a hula girl and showed off the grass skirt she wore in 1947. Postwar Britain was open to the exotic, to colour in the grey. Hawaiian music was easy to create with a relatively cheap instrument like a ukulele and filled the gap.
But Mendelssohn and most of his band weren’t Hawaiian. He was a relative of his more famous German namesake. The dad of Procul Harum’s Gary Brooker was a Hawaiian Serenader.
Much of what was seen was similarly sleight-of-handish. Sylvia, who sang “Y viva Espagna”, is Swedish jazz singer Sylvia Vrethammar. Gheorghe Zamfir was Romanian, not from the Andean home of the panpipes. Fellow panpipe hitmakers Incantation were created to accompany Ballet Rambert. France’s Gypsy Kings hit big with "Volare", an Italian composition. Then there’s Paul Simon and his Graceland. It doesn’t seem to matter whether this is a mix-and-match pop. Being foreign is enough. What our acceptance of this try-it-on-for-size music meant wasn’t asked.
Another question raised – and partially addressed - was the role of World War Two in giving music a platform. The Red Army Choir were seen filling the Royal Albert Hall. Germany’s Obernkirchen Children’s Choir hit big with “The Happy Wanderer” after appearing at a Welsh song festival. The USSR was an ally against Germany, but how did these German kids conquer the prejudice against Germany? Cuteness could have been enough, but they were war-time orphans.
Denmark emerged as an unlikely early colossus. Nina and Frederik were seen on their TV series singing the folk songs of the world – more try-it-for-size stuff. Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann won Eurovision in 1963 with the atmospheric “Dansevise”. Their tough competition included Heidi Brühl, Françoise Hardy, Esther Ofarim, Nana Mouskouri and Monica Zetterlund.
Watch Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann performing “Dansevise” on 1963's Eurovision Song Contest
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But it was Mouskouri who became the British favourite, via her late-Sixties BBC TV series. Package holidays had made Greece accessible. Here it was, for reliving in the living room. Sylvia’s "Y viva Espagna" also caught the holiday spirit, despite General Franco being in power then.
Apparently, all this randomness came to an end around 1986 and 1987 with Graceland and Andy Kershaw championing the Bhundu Boys on BBC radio. World music had arrived. Whither Osibisa? Or even Santana? Reggae? Manu Dibango? Only in the mid-Eighties were we supposedly ready to hear the indigenous music of foreign countries.
What of foreign pop, the pop of Anyone For Demis? After ABBA won Eurovision in 1974, the doors were open. They’re still open. But Anyone for Demis? wasn’t fussed with ABBA’s gleeful hijacking of our pop. It’s Shakira who was awarded the global pop garland.
