"I Want to Go to Andorra!", also known as "Andorra" is a song with words by Malvina
Reynolds and music by Pete Seeger; copyright 1962 Brio Music, renewed 1990.
The song was inspired by a news article that Reynolds happened to see in the New York
Times, according to which the military budget of Andorra in 1961 was just 300
pessetes ($4.90) and consisted solely of the purchase of blank rounds for official
ceremonies. The tiny sum motivated Reynolds and Seeger to dedicate an anti-war song
to the little country in the Pyrenees.
Pete Seeger's recording of this song was issued on a CD in 2003 by the Andorran government. Also on the CD is a 1996 speech by the Andorran Foreign Minister given on the occasion of his signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty at the U. S. State Department in Washington, D.C. It was printed in Reynolds' Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs, Peter Blood-Patterson: Rise Up Singing: The Group-Singing Song Book [lyrics & guitar chords only] (1988), Broadside No. 5 (May 1962), Sing Out!, Volume 12(3) (1962), and Wanda Willson Whitman's Songs That Changed the World (1969). It was recorded by Annie Patterson et al. on Everything Possible; 164 Songs About Community & Change (1991), Pete Seeger on The Bitter and the Sweet (1962) and a few others. I learned it from Seeger's album. Other songs by Malvina Reynolds: "The Bankers and the Diplomats" "Billy Boy (parody)" "It Isn't Nice" "Little Boxes" "What Have They Done to the Rain". |