My Polish Alphabet: R for "Red Belt"

 

 

"Red Belt" (Czerwony Pas) was one of the songs that we sang with my primary school girls' choir. One of the two I can recall.

The song about Hutsuls (Carpathian highlanders) living their happy and free lives in the Carpathian Mountains is quite old and known both in Poland and Ukraine. I like the changing tempo of the tune - from slow to a faster one. It is also one of the traditional songs that used to be sung by many generations on both sides of the Polish/Ukrainian border. The piece comes from a drama (published in 1843) written by Józef Korzeniowski, Polish writer who lived in the area that was part of Poland then. Nowadays, it is western Ukraine.

A traditional version of the Red Belt

 More modern version of the song by a contemporary folk group

Our choir director was also our Music teacher, a man in his early thirties.  As I have already mentioned in one of my previous posts, the Music curriculum in Polish educational system is related to general knowledge of music, its history, composers and their main pieces + basic understanding of notes and musical notation.  The choir was an extra/after classes activity, officially not mandatory. However, if the teacher said you had a good voice/musical ear, you had to participate in the choir activities to get an A in Music.

So we did sing at school assemblies and once even participated in a regional school choirs competition. I cannot remember what the outcome of the latter was, though. Our teacher was quite good at his profession, he played the piano during the Music classes and accompanied the girls' choir. We had the songs sheets, with lyrics only, as singing songs/notes was not part of the school subject curriculum. We simply followed the musical instructions given by the teacher and the melody played by him on the piano.

During the summer break, the teacher was part of the music band on the Stefan Batory passenger liner, that regularly cruised between Poland and the USA. At that time, traveling to the Western countries including the US was not a thing that everybody could do. Mainly those people whose jobs required crossing the border were allowed to do so. The man must have been a good piano player to get a job on that passenger cruiser and/or perhaps had some "connections" that helped him achieve that.

Stefan Batory

Somehow, my girlfriend and I did not see that particular side of it all and we were not impressed that the man managed to see the States every now and then. We found it rather funny and peculiar that an honorable teacher was also a band musician on a boat. These days, I look at it differently, but being kids, we found it weird and rather undignified.

Another thing that made us little girls laugh was the teacher's socks that he tended to wear quite often.

It was the time of the "Interkosmos" mission project, when the international astronauts crew made their first spaceflight. Our teacher seemed to like wearing colorful socks with the "Interkosmos" logo on them. I do not know whether anybody else noticed that, but we, silly girls, did.

Wherever the man is these days, I wish him all the best. I liked the choir days/time.

The other song I can recall we sang with the girls' choir was a Polish version of Joan Baez's song "Donna". The Polish lyrics made it an anti-war song. Somehow, I can still remember the song words.

(My free translation into English)

One life you have,
who will you give this flower to,
do not go across the river,
you will perish there.
One life you have,
who will you give this flower to,
when a shot will come from across the river.

People, people do not perish,
you will save the world.
People, people, I pity you,
It is the war that is to perish.

Dona, Dona...

PS
Years ago, when I was still working in Poland, one day, I happened to wear a t-shirt with the word "Texas" on it. During a class, some students of mine started giggling "O - Texas, Texas". I guess, my Texas t-shirt was in their eyes an equivalent of the Music teacher's Interkosmos socks.

Credits: 

Stephan Batory ship photo: By Wolfgang Fricke - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103579976

German in Texas

Decades ago, when I was trying to learn German, if someone had told me I would find that knowledge/language useful in Texas, I would have laughed, thinking the person was joking. Neither did I expect to be in Texas anytime in the future, nor have the faintest idea I would sing there in German. Mysterious are the ways indeed. 

My mom tried to teach me German when I was little. She told me the German words for "a doll" (die Puppe) and "doll pram" (Puppenwagen), and that was the end of my learning in those days. The two German words sound similar to the Polish words that mean totally something else - "pupa" ("bottom" in Polish) and "waga" (="scales"/"to weigh"). Then, being a few years old, I found it very funny, and I just could not stop laughing. Needless to say, mom got very discouraged regarding her teaching efforts.

Well, I am glad much later, when I was also much older, I did learn the language to a degree that makes me able to be part of the local choir. I do enjoy it a lot.

Last week the town celebrated the 40th Oktoberfest, German language, culture, and heritage. 

 

 

We had a great time too.

 

Song

Sometimes I wake up in the night with a song on my mind. Usually, the song gets stuck to me for some time until I hear it sung by a singer. Recently, it has been the song which starts with  "Jedno życie masz..."/"One life you have...". I learned it at primary school, and I sang it then with the school choir. Most of the lyrics I had forgotten, that was only that one verse:

 

"Jedno życie masz, komu dasz ten kwiat, nie idź za rzekę zginiesz tam"/

"One life you have, who will you give that flower to, do not go across the river, you will perish there."    

 

 I remembered that the original version in English was sung by Joan Baez, so I looked for a video on youtube.

Interestingly, looking for the Polish version of "Dona, Dona", I also learned that it is actually a traditional Jewish song with lyrics in Yiddish.

 

Well, there is always something new to learn. I like the red dress by the way.

The Polish lyrics were not about cows going to slaughter, though. It was more like an anti-war song.
 

Finally, it is, I found the words I had learned at school.

 

"Jedno życie masz, 

komu dasz ten kwiat? 

Nie idź za rzekę zginiesz tam.

 

Komu dasz ten kwiat? 

Życia swego kwiat? 

Kiedy zza rzeki padnie strzał? 

 

Ludzie, ludzie nie gińcie,

Wy ocalicie świat.

Ludzie, ludzie szkoda was. 

To wojna zginąć ma.

 

Dona Dona Don..."

Which is

 

"One life you have,

Who will you give that flower to?
Don't go across the river,

You will perish there.

 

One life you have,

Who will you give that flower to?
The flower of your life?

When the shot from across the river will be fired.

 

People, people do not perish,

You will save the world.
People, people do not perish,

The war is that one to die.

 

Dona Dona Don..."

 

 
I did not manage to find any live version of the song sung in Polish (with the particular lyrics mentioned above), so the song is still here Dona Dona Dona Dona...