That anti-war song meme

[winter]

I think shezan's entry and subsequent discussion more or less reflects my own approach to the "destroy all weapons" crowd. But in the meantime, have a song. It's in Russian, and the translation is mine and clumsy, so forgive me for inaccuracies:


Forgive the infantry, for being so reckless
We're always retreating, when spring reigns the earth
And walking over treacherous ground, there is no escape
Only white willows, like white sisters, looking at our backs

Don't trust the infantry when it draws down summer rain
Don't trust the infantry when it sings songs of courage
Don't trust, don't trust, when the nightingales in the orchard sing
The weighing of life and death hasn't finished yet

Time taught us to live day to day, to open the door
My comrade, fellow man, your fate was not that bad
We're always marching on, and only one thing wakes us at night
Where are we retreating to, when spring reigns the earth?


Original lyrics

Bulat Okudzhava - The Infantry Song (1.1 MB)

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Waaaah! It says "dowload limit exceeded"!

Would you YSI it to me (or even email; 1.1 megs is no problem. Shezan at gmx dot net? Pretty please?)

[winter]

Must be MegaUpload playing silly buggers >_< Let's see if Sendspace works better....

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yayyyyyy Sendspace! Got it and it's lovely!!! (Even though I don't understand, it sounds familiar, too, because my grandmother was Russian & spoke it at home with my mother.)

Is this Okudzhava himself singing???

[winter]

Yes, it's him. IIRC the album I have was recorded during one of his post-1990 visits to Poland, so he was quite old. BTW, as far as Russian bards go, my other favourite is Vladimir Vysotsky - almost all his songs are available here :) About the only person I can think of to compare those two guys to is Leonard Cohen...

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love Vysotsky as well!

[sukeban.livejournal.com]

More Republican songs from the Spanish civil war than you can shake a stick at, with lyrics and MP3s:

http://lacucaracha.info/scw/music/index.htm
http://personales.ya.com/altavoz/canciones.htm

The most famous would be "A las barricadas", "Ay Carmela" (which has a movie made with it as a theme) and, of course, the International.

That said, our Civil war gave us all dead relatives on each front and convinced us that a) war is horrible, and b) the good guys don't always win, even if half of them would just uphold a different brand of dictatorship. We did not regain democracy in the battlefront but on the streets, and with terrorist group ETA announcing yesterday a permanent ceasefire, it seems that diplomacy and lawfully upholding human rights sometimes beats open confrontation.

(Didn't I celebrate? Yay for the end of terrorism in Spain, at least the Basque kind of it)