Clustered Globalism

Last posting about Paris, promise.

So.
In Le Métro, I heard the most amazing music ever. It was a group of men ranging about 25-60 years in age. To my unfamiliar eyes they looked like Eastern Europeans of some kind, singing what was the most beautiful chorus I'd ever heard underground, to an orchestra of alto strings and a cimitar. The song nearly brought tears to my eyes.

They were selling CD's but I went Algernon and thought it'd be online. I rushed my way past them to my quai, throwing into their bucket what later turned out to be 7 Euros in coins, or 20 million US Dollars.

Fast-forward to today: Anne, desperately searching for any evidence of this orchestra, finds this:



This, folks, is the band, and that was the song they sang, and even though low-res video on YouTube does it no justice, you'll have to trust it was an emotional experience to hear these men sing it in their perfect perfect harmony.

It turns out they are called Les Musiciens de Lviv (Ukraine), and the song they're singing is "Tamo Daleko."

Tamo Daleko turns out to be a really sad song Serb soldiers sang during World War I in memory of those lost or faraway. link

And here's a more traditional rendering of the song:



Note: having no idea what is actually being sang or what's posting in this video, I was totally taken aback by the 1 minute mark in the above clip. I never thought I'd see two totally unrelated versions of a Disney rape scene in one day (ibid: previous posting about Art Comix).

But the irony doesn't stop there. Here's the latest Ukraine-pop version of the same song:



I think.