IN the past, Fifa used to ring a record company about a week before the World Cup started and say something like: "Can you get some complete dick to warble some banal togetherness sentiment over a generic backing track and chuck it out into the shops by Monday with a sticker saying 'Official World Cup Song' please?" You may well have noticed that such a strategy didn't exactly pay off for the Federation Internationale de Football Association, so this tournament, instead of getting someone else to be crassly and cynically manipulative, they've gone and done it themselves. With alarming results.

Cognisant that a projected 30 billion people will be tuning into the garrison game at some stage over the next few weeks, Fifa decided to enlist the services of a Swedish agency called Engine who were charged with delivering not an 'official song' but an 'official melody' that could be exposed on so many different commercial levels. Engine commissioned two little-known New York musicians to come up with a five-note melody that could be wrapped around the word "bamboo". Quite what the word bamboo has to do with anything remains - as so many things with Fifa - a weird mystery.

These five notes will be inserted into a series of songs that will be performed at various times during half-time intervals. Il Divo and Tina Braxton have incorporated the notes into their truly emetic The Time of Our Lives, which will be performed at the July 9th final. The same notes will crop up in a (get this) Fifa remix of the Shakira/Wyclef Jean track Hips Don't Lie and also in German megastar Herbert Gronemeyer's Celebrate the Day.

Fifa are on a demented audio identity trip with the five notes of Bamboo. It's all over the EA sports video game, 2006 Fifa World Cup; it's available as a ringtone and will also feature prominently in advertising from the main corporate sponsors. And just in case you've forgotten, they are Adidas, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Phillips.

It's hardly surprising that there is now someone who is the "World Cup Music Programme Project Manager For Fifa". That man is Rupert Daniels and he says of Fifa's new entry into the musical marketplace: "We're the world football governing body, not a music company, but with Bamboo we have tried to make it the backbone of the entire music programme. I think Bamboo could be extended into a full symphony, it could be done Latino style or hip-hop style." Fantastic.

The director of Engine, Bjorn Lindborg, says of Bamboo: "We only went to a handful of writers with it. Rather than picking an artist to record the song, we wanted to start with Il Divo's Time of Our Lives, which is based on the melody line. We wanted to create an exciting meeting between two different cultures."

Lindborg believes that embedding an official melody into anything that isn't nailed down is the way forward. "Other sporting events but also brands, for instance, those sponsoring [ the World Cup] will open their eyes to the fact that there are several ways of including music in their marketing platform and their branding strategies. Particularly for sports events and brands, it's a very attractive model," he says.

If you simply can't get enough of Bamboo, you should check out the remarkable Voices of The Fifa World Cup album which has just gone on release. In between the interminable amount of Bamboo-related songs, you'll find such memorable football anthems as Elvis Presley's Always On My Mind, Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are, Oasis's Wonderwall and direct from the terraces at Millwall FC - Woman in Love by Barbra Streisand.

REVOLVER

Brian Boyd