Chad and La Tchadienne

Patrick: 00:00:15

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. I'm Patrick and I'm here to tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

lantic to the North Atlantic,: 9699

If you just want to learn stuff and look at cats, a better question is where that gets us and why we're headed there. Today we get to a continent that contains 28 and one 8% of the world's countries.

It is Africa, and we'll be spending a lot of time in Africa because it's gigantic, fascinating, and literally the cradle of humanity, although that probably won't figure into the national anthems show all that much. I know technically we have been here before because we talked about Seychelles, but that is a tiny little island nation off the coast.

And you should listen to the episode because in my mind at least, it's kind of its own unique thing. It's just. It's very Seychelles.

I'm excited for this continent though, because I will be learning a lot more in Africa than in many other places because the small town portion of the american education system that I participated in before college just sort of acknowledges that there is a continent there and people live there, plus Egypt. Suffice to say that there are some gaps in my knowledge and I'm looking forward to filling them.

The country we are headed to is because of something my daughter wanted to know. I asked her what I should do next and she wanted to know about Chad because she wondered how a country could come to have the name of a person.

And that gave me a reason to tell you about La Tacha din or the song of the Chadian. So it turns out that it's not a person's name, or at least the country's namesake is not a person.

The country officially called the Republic of Chad is named after the Lake Chad. The lake got its name because confused european explorers in the 18 hundreds thought that the locals were referring to the region as Chad.

So that's what they called the lake on their map, but it was really just the word for water in the local dialect. I'm sad about this lake though, because of what I learned to used to cover nearly 28,000 km² that is 1.3 times the size of whales.

ng have reduced it to between: 2000

They are hominid fossils as old as 7 million years in Chad. They are the oldest. That's not it, though.

Scholars think that the oldest evidence of human pottery may be in the country's archaeological record, but we don't know yet.

Just like despite knowing that most of Africa's languages originated in a band that includes Chad, we can't pinpoint the origin of the people that actually live there.

ernment of Chad as of October: 2023

But YouTube usually helps me out with countries like that and I really can't find anything. So as such, we're going to change it up. And Shad might even get a second episode someday when they get a new government.

But we are going to listen to a marching band song that captures the musical feel and official written music, and I found a vocal version and I will play them in that order. So enjoy the next four and a half minutes or so of two versions of one anthem.

Days on FOIA keep the goddess the boy I don't keep it don't wait nip had the don't go. My initial reaction is that despite being very frustrated, I can't find a version merging music and lyrics as they were originally written.

It is an interesting way to listen to an anthem. The instrumental left me feeling fairly flat.

To be honest, I'm not sure if it's because the march somehow sounds subdued or if it doesn't work for me as a wordless composition. The vocal, though, I sort of love my daughter, said it reminded her of the Star Spangled Banner. Like this.

I can hear that since it's the anthem she's mostly familiar with and it's generally sung very emotionally and with a vocal focus. Now, I told you how far away from Bolivia we are, but even to people that know the globe very well, that can be less than helpful.

Unless you're like super good at world. It's actually not that hard to place this country if you know which continent Africa is. Chad is the second country down from the Mediterranean Sea.

Helpfully, it is very large and ranks in at the 20th largest in the world a bit less than twice the size of Texas. At 1.284 million km². That is 496,000 sq mi for people from Texas.

More specifically, if you look at the middle of the north side of Africa, there's an indentation, sort of like Italy just did a sweet hero pose landing and then jumped up. That indent is part of the coastline of Libya, which is the northern. It borders Chad to the north with Sudan to the east.

And Chad's western border is Niger. A bit of Nigeria and Cameroon. The last shares the southern border with the central African Republic.

I got sidetracked on Chad's geography for a bit, writing this. The country has three distinct zones.

The Sahara in the northern third, a savannah in the southern third, and my new term for this episode, the Sahelian in the middle third.

The last area is a transitional zone, as it would be, and leads to some really incredible biodiversity that I read a lot of about for this episode, even though I didn't need to. But that's not what actually sidetracked me.

I got really sidetracked because Chad is referred to, or specifically, Chad's capital is referred to as the dead heart of Africa. It's because Ndajima is about 666 miles from the nearest seaport in Da'ula, Cameroon. Kind of metal, I think.

But obviously I wanted to know if it was indeed the center of the continent of Africa, and it is not. I define that, and there's some different opinions on what the center actually means, but I define that as the pole of inaccessibility.

That's my working definition. It's the one I prefer. It's the point that is as far as possible from the coasts. Each of the continents and oceans have one of these.

Africa's is in the middle of nowhere in the central african republic, and not in Chad. Chad does have a population of nearly 14 million people, and they speak over 100 languages, and there's a similar number of ethnic groups there.

And their history goes back pretty much to the actual beginning of humanity. Sometimes I'm not really sure where to start the story, but after reading up on this country, I am granted a natural entry point.

And as many of my stories are going to, this one begins with the entry of a colonial power coming in to exploit the resources and the people that were already there. So we get a little bit more of the chronicle of the dismantling of colonialism here.

As you might have guessed from the anthem itself, the occupying country is France. Before they arrived at the very end of the 19th century, Chad was part of the Wadai sultanate.

african republic existed from: 1501

At the very least, they were determined to exploit the people in the region as farmers and laborers if they couldn't find anything to take. So they moved east from the west coast, and maybe you'll hear about that in a future episode.

Initially, their excursions were military, and they ran into a variety of resistance, as these things tend to do. The initial and most noteworthy resistance was the result of basically just one guy named Rabi az Zubyar. Granted, he was a self made king.

So someday I'm going to do a show about the interesting and mostly terrible people that I've encountered in the Anthems podcast, and this guy's going to get an episode.

He was a slave trader and a raider that escaped Egypt and established his own kingdom and then decided that he wanted the French off his continent and went full in on getting them there.

ic engagements throughout the: 1890

. Paul was born in: 1899

In: 1986

I'm not surprised that there is little in the historical record about this guy.

He's a regular person, just like me and you, and people like us sometimes just do one historically relevant thing, or mostly the zero relevant historical things. We've run into this on my show several times, and it will continue to happen.

Sometimes someone else involved has a far more interesting story that serves to move the story along, but here, that is not what is going to happen. Our writer, one Louis Guidrol, has an equally modest record. He was a chadian musician. He wrote the lyrics with his students at St. Paul's school.

He was born in: 1922

Then I can add some amendments in so officially, shortest story on the show. I'm kidding.

. Then we need to get Chad to: 1960

I am going to skip most of the history of the Jesuits because there is a lot of it. It is very complicated, and that's not the point of the show. You want to read about it? There's a lot to read.

Some of it is very interesting, but we're going to talk about maybe what the order of Jesuits, what a typical member might have been thinking about at the time. Maybe that's a relevant way to discuss it for me, at least that's what I think.

And I am currently hosting the show and I have not gotten enough attention to get, like, any feedback from my listeners, or at least none that I can find anyway. The Jesuits are in order.

They were founded by a group of catholic college students from Spain in a Paris crypt, and were envisioned as an evangelical army of the Lord Jesus, directed directly by the pope. The first seven of them were zealous, very zealous in their mission, and they quickly expanded the order through colleges and missions.

roved through a papal bull in: 1540

By the time our composer was born, the catholic portion of the multi denominational christian mission in Africa that continues to this day actually was mostly a french affair, and they were observed to be using papal missions as political agents. We know that the political agency thing appears not to have helped the French all that much. More on that in a couple of minutes.

But the Jesuits did have a lasting effect on the religious landscape of Chad. It remains a slightly muslim majority country at 52.1% and 44.2% Christianity. Fully one fifth of the Christians are catholic.

Evangelizing does not come without controversy, and this order has been accused of some fairly serious religious persecution of all non catholic religions, particularly non Christians and Protestants. They also used slavery to support their institutions, although that's mostly Americans.

And I didn't read anything about it happening in Africa proper in any case, a person joined the order because they were highly educated, very driven, and very serious about what they were doing. I will let you make up your own mind about the jesuit order here, because we need to catch the timeline up.

So two very serious about religion and their lay vocation. Guys wrote the anthem as part of a contest. At least one of the men was a Chadian, and they included a group of local children.

In the process, we can infer that they had at least some patriotism and affinity for the country. Jesuits took an oath of piety and poverty, so they certainly didn't do it for fame or fortune.

Now, a time jump we left the flow of events at when France had effectively defeated the resistance in Chad. Recall that the northern two thirds of the country is Savannah and the Sahara desert. It was populated mostly by nomadic arabic herders.

This was a very difficult area for the French to effectively administrate, and they were forced to settle for leaving the people mostly alone in exchange for basically reliable trade routes.

f the country. The end of the: 1930

But the French stumbled along despite that. According to one source, depraved or incompetent did not disqualify one from an assignment in Jad.

ny occupied France in June of: 1940

Chad was the first nation in the alliance of formerly french administered african countries that declared Florida allies after Paris fell.

The lieutenant governor, Felix Aboo, had some african and european descent and was concerned that colonialism might be causing cultural dislocation all over the world. He worked to get local people into administrative roles and return power to the folks that it's supposed to come from, the, you know, actual people.

administrator to take. In the: 1930

o skip completely and jump to: 1956

rprising that a referendum in: 1958

That is a chain we're not going to follow in its entirety today, because for our purposes, it is sufficient to say that France sort of lost hold on the situation, and Chad declared itself an independent republic.

The first president was Francois Tomballet, or Tomballer, and in a story for another time, he fairly immediately became an autocratic leader, which actually happens kind of a lot on earth when countries become independent. At this point, there is really not much more history to be had about the anthem du jour la to Cha John.

Again, we know that there was a competition after independence was fully declared. The rest of the story, should I choose to elaborate, is more political machinations that can get us lost in the weeds.

I'd rather that we move along with the little information that we get about the Chad constitution.

Based on the other anthem histories I've read about, I'll guess that either the constitution called for an anthem but failed to specify it, or kick the matter down to whatever legislative body that it empowered upon promulgation. We know that it was written with the assistance of a group of students at a boarding school in the modern city of Saar.

he Congo Ocean Railway. As of: 2012

Watch the YouTube video that is linked in the reference number 26 in the show notes. It's pretty cool. It's about the railroad.

That's just about everything I can bring out of the story of the Chad Ian without a great deal more reliable historical information that seems to simply not exist on the parts of the Internet that I can go, or the parts of my local library that I know. Sometimes there is not a rich storyline, but I seriously will keep digging because I keep researching all of this stuff.

I just have more and more to do. Yeah, I'm obsessed a bit. I'm doing a show on national anthems now we can talk about the song itself.

The Chad Ian is written a la Marcia, or in the style of a march, typically in two four or four four time, generally played at 108 bpm. My metronome calls it Allegretto and I've seen sources refer to it as sullum. It is slow for March.

Honestly, though, the writing is better than the composition in this anthem. As far as I'm concerned, the version we heard in the beginning is just my favorite.

There will be some links to other examples in the show notes unfortunately in official recording, yet eludes me at time of recording this show, the song is written as chorus to open, then three verses each, followed by the refrain. Officially, the anthem is played as refrain verse one refrain, but we will consider the entire written lyrics for purposes of this episode.

The chorus opens the anthem people of Chad, arise and to work. You have conquered your soil and won your rights. Your freedom will be born of your courage. Lift up your eyes, the future is yours.

An immediate exaltation to get to work was a surprise to read, since the people never really stopped having to make the country function. But it does make sense that this isn't an anthem. Refrain it says explicitly, we have won the day and gotten your freedom.

You have had courage to win freedom and now need to work to keep your land and your rights.

The last line in the refrain is typical of anthems, telling people to look forward to the future of the country, and we are followed with the first verse, o my country, may God protect you. May your neighbors admire your children joyful, peaceful advance as you sing faithful to your fathers who are watching you.

The first verse is a bit preachy for me, but it makes perfect sense when you consider the authors. It's also definitely not the most religious thing you've heard here so far, and it's not the most religious thing you're going to hear here yet.

It's to be expected, though, because this is an anthem written for a very religious country, written by a man that was a member of an order of Jesus and his students at a jesuit school. So Christianity is going to be in this anthem, and the order is going to specifically let people know that they should be Catholic.

So the prescriptive tone definitely tracks. It's just that's because it is written by Jesuits.

The second line is not explicitly religious, but it's on target because an anthem should extol the greatness of the country's next generation. Then we are returned to themes of joy, peace, and faithfulness to the people that have given you the country that you're celebrating.

The second verse follows after a repeat of the refrain. Race of the north and its immense herds. Race of the south who cultivate the fields, shepherds, mountaineers, fishers and trackers.

Let us be a single great people who advances.

I find this an especially well written verse, and really appropriate to the goal of a national anthem is honoring the traditional roles of a country's people.

That's fitting the geographical diversity of Chad leads to a diversity of people, and like I said before, there's over a hundred different ethnicities and languages. It's a super diverse place.

Despite the wildly disparate population density with the majority of the people in the southern fifth of the country, there is a distinct national identity. The song insists that the people will unite and head into the future together. And from here we get to refrain again.

And then we head into the third verse of the anthem.

Hoe in hand, valiantly make your rope, see your children who are tormented by hunger the fields before you wait for your grain let oil flow and granaries overflow. This verse reminds me a bit of la Dessalinian, the very first anthem that I covered on the show.

There, the author is trying to convince the audience of the values that hard work can have when it is not done in slavery.

Here it's a triumphant tone that says, we're free to provide for our own and resources of the land will be ours, so work, but for different purposes, kind of cousins or echoes of each other.

Oil exploration began in the country fairly early on in the colonial period in Chad, and today it constitutes about 60% of the economy, which, of course, isn't really a long term economic solution. We will hear the refrain again, and then the final verse. Your engineers will trace roads on you. Your physicians will make you big and strong.

To the students work without worrying about the effort. Rout, ignorance and evil. Another very topic appropriate verse here.

The most popular anthems I've read about so far have been very direct and written by people that know the audience here. The audience is a whole lot of people that are tired of being told what to do with their country by somebody else.

They see hopeful outcomes ahead for their youth. The people are going to decisively defeat the malevolent forces that have tried to take their country and keep it from them.

So strong and direct, for sure to make a fittingly triumphant run into the final refrain and the end of our anthem. In several ways, this was an unexpected episode.

It was both easy and difficult to write because of the lack of information about the topic at hand and the real interest that I've now got in the ultimate storyline of Chad.

And honestly, a couple of religious missionaries really believing in the country and entering a contest to write a song to honor it is kind of a weird way for this to happen. I'm glad that I got to learn about it, and maybe someday you'll get an update.

For now, the credits, of course, the writing, recording and production for the show are done by me and I wrote and played the intro and outro music. I used the music with my permission.

However, I did not ask the dogs for permission to use the background noise that you will occasionally hear of them wrestling. I also did not ask the traffic for permission to use their noise. My sources other tasty bits I found are contained in the show notes.

This is mostly YouTube videos this time and some cool stuff I learned about Chad for real folks. Email me some feedback or like literally anything.

I badly want to know what it is that you want to happen here that is not currently happening here or what you'd like to happen differently. Even if this is the only episode you listen to and then leave. Drop me a line. Give me some feedback. Come on.

The most direct way to get to my show notes or contact info is@anthemspodcast.com dot. You can find me on Facebook or WhatsApp as the Anthems podcast.

I'm not on the rents of them as the show, but I am sharing these episodes with the social medias with the hashtag hash anthemspod. So if you follow that maybe it'll pop up in your feed.

I've also heard that ratings and reviews super duper matter, so if you like doing that it would be super cool. In the last 28 days I've had 16 listeners in nine different countries.

That is small numbers, but you're going to get these as long as I can write them because someone else needs to hear my thoughts.

tters@gmail.com. call me plus: 1203