I Zimbra
| "I Zimbra" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
UK vinyl single
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| Single by Talking Heads | ||||
| from the album Fear of Music | ||||
| B-side | "Air" (3:33) | |||
| Released | 1980 | |||
| Format | 7" | |||
| Recorded | 1979 | |||
| Length | 3:06 | |||
| Label | Sire | |||
| Songwriter(s) | David Byrne, Brian Eno, Hugo Ball | |||
| Producer(s) | Brian Eno | |||
| Talking Heads singles chronology | ||||
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"I Zimbra" is a song by American new wave band Talking Heads, released as the second single from their 1979 album Fear of Music.
The song's lyrics are an adaptation of Dadaist Hugo Ball's poem "Gadji beri bimba". According to Sytze Steenstra in Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present, the music draws heavily on the African popular music Byrne was listening to at the time.
The lyrics contain these lines:
In an interview, Jerry Harrison named "I Zimbra" as his favorite Talking Heads song, and pointed out that the style of the group’s next album, Remain in Light, was indebted to the song’s innovations.
We also knew that our next album would be a further exploration of what we had begun with "I Zimbra".
Talking Heads
Additional Personnel
The song was one of three songs (along with "Cities" and "Big Business") that were cut from the theatrical release of the 1983 concert film Stop Making Sense but were restored as a bonus feature for the 1999 DVD release.
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Wikipedia