"Dark is the Night" - a multilingual version of a classic Soviet World War II song
Yesterday, Aunt Anya sent me a video via Facebook Messenger, urging me to figure out some way to show it to Grandma Nina on Victory Day. And, after I watched it, I could see what she meant.
"Dark is the Night" is one of those classic Soviet songs where, even if you have no idea what movie it was originally written for, you at least know it exists, and you know its chorus. The song has become part of the Soviet cultural osmosis - or at least it was when I was growing up. And having it sung in many languages adds a new dimension to this meditation on death and love in a war zone. A reminder that World War II was truly a world war, and that many soldiers serving many countries probably felt something similar as they fought the common enemies.
Aunt Anya had no idea how to share the video outside Messenger - but I figured that it was probably on Youtube somewhere. And it took me a bit longer to realize that the first search result wasn't actually the original video. This one was:
Reading the video description, I got a bit more background. The whole thing came out of a Road to Yalta festival. The song was originally meant to be the opening number for this year's festival, but with COVID-19 moving it online, they decided to put it together from the confines of their homes.
Oh, and the Road to Yalta festival is organized Andrey Kondrashov, a news anchor for state-run Channel 1 and a spokesperson for Putin's 2018 presidential campaign. Which explains some of the nationalist, United Russia back-patting rhetoric in the video description. And may explain why the comments were turned off.
Needless to say, finding that out gave the whole thing a sour taste... But hey, whatever the intentions were, it's still a good concept. It was executed fairly well. And, hey - there's no reason why this can't be replicated in some other, less ideologically tainted circumstances.
"Dark is the Night" is one of those classic Soviet songs where, even if you have no idea what movie it was originally written for, you at least know it exists, and you know its chorus. The song has become part of the Soviet cultural osmosis - or at least it was when I was growing up. And having it sung in many languages adds a new dimension to this meditation on death and love in a war zone. A reminder that World War II was truly a world war, and that many soldiers serving many countries probably felt something similar as they fought the common enemies.
Aunt Anya had no idea how to share the video outside Messenger - but I figured that it was probably on Youtube somewhere. And it took me a bit longer to realize that the first search result wasn't actually the original video. This one was:
Click to viewReading the video description, I got a bit more background. The whole thing came out of a Road to Yalta festival. The song was originally meant to be the opening number for this year's festival, but with COVID-19 moving it online, they decided to put it together from the confines of their homes.
Oh, and the Road to Yalta festival is organized Andrey Kondrashov, a news anchor for state-run Channel 1 and a spokesperson for Putin's 2018 presidential campaign. Which explains some of the nationalist, United Russia back-patting rhetoric in the video description. And may explain why the comments were turned off.
Needless to say, finding that out gave the whole thing a sour taste... But hey, whatever the intentions were, it's still a good concept. It was executed fairly well. And, hey - there's no reason why this can't be replicated in some other, less ideologically tainted circumstances.