The Joy of The Penguin Café

Introducing The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Simon Jeffes

Many years ago I saw a video featuring penguins and loved the music that was used as the soundtrack. The piece was “Beanfields” by The Penguin Café Orchestra, who up to that point I had been totally unaware of.

I can't find that video on YouTube but the one above featuring "Air A Danser" and footage from "Happy Feet" I think is a more than acceptable substitute.

The Penguin Café Orchestra was formed in 1972 by Simon Jeffes and performed for 24 years until he sadly died of a brain tumour. His son Arthur maintains the concept as the Penguin Cafe and you can find out all about them on their website here.

This is how Simon Jeffes said how the Penguin Café Orchestra came about

“In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, every one of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralised, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.”

The music of the Penguin Café Orchestra, while being performed by a roughly classical acoustic octet, has more in common with a general pop structure with music hall and classical variations bleeding in, including ragtime, but the music is always totally joyful.

So my Youtube playlist is here with a few observations on some of the songs.

Music For A Found Harmonium

Jeffes wrote this on a harmonium he had found in a back street in Kyoto, where he was staying in the summer of 1982 after the ensemble's first tour of Japan. He wrote that after installing the found harmonium "in a friend's house in one of the most beautiful parts at the edge of the city,he "frequently visited this instrument during the next few months, and I remember the time fondly as one during which I was under a form of enchantment with the place and the time."

Beanfields

This is an incredibly simple but upbeat piece which you cannot fail to be uplifted by. A simple tune that will stay with you for a very long time.

Telephone and A Rubber Band

This is possibly their most famous piece", which is based around a tape loop of a UK telephone ring tone intersected with an engaged tone, accompanied by the twanging of a rubber band. This obviously refers to pre mobile landline telephones.

Perpetuum Mobile

Veering towards classical with a complex but beautiful repeated motif, which you don’t want to stop.

Air A Danser

The main driving motif of this piece is four notes repeated and built upon by the players, another beauty

Giles Farnaby’s Dream

This reminds me of “La Bamba” the traditional Mexican song popularised by Richie Valens but is so Penguin Café Orchestra. You will love this.

Conclusion

Although I have listed only six of their songs, this is just a taster for their amazing music. You really need to immerse yourself in The Penguin Café, and you will not regret it at all