Tag: music

Peasprout Chen

Henry Lien’s new book is coming out. It is, disappointingly, not about Peasprout Chen. Instead it’s about how to tell stories (I think, pre-ordered but haven’t received it yet) and OMG he knows how to tell stories. The stories he tells are absolutely overpoweringly insane and incredibly multi-faceted. Here are some reviews that are funnier than anything I’m likely to write AND CONTAIN MASSIVE SPOILERS SO DON’T READ THEM IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS about the outcome of Awesome Ice Skating Martial Art Battles in a Manga School and politics and deep heavy teen relationship drama: https://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/tag/henry+lien

I’d just like to note that these two books about Awesome Ice Skating Martial Art Battles in a Manga School can ALSO be read as:

  • A sensitive bildungsroman that accurately shows the inside experience of being a certain kind of teen
  • A deep psychological exploration of the effects of parentification and totalitarian government on a child, in the vein of Gaidar and Kassil (but with more martial arts! and magic! and ice skating! and no actual real-world children being killed)
  • A relationship drama in the vein of Princess Charskaya (but with more politics! and ice skating giant MegaZord! and martial arts!).

Did I mention multi-faceted? Henry Lien’s writing has more facets than dragonfly eyes do. It is round, it is firm, it is fully packed, and it is enormously satisfying. Can’t wait to read the new book.

Vu iz dos gesele

TIL that three of the most commonly known Yiddish songs (Donna Donna, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, and Крутится Вертится Шар Голубой) exist in the versions written by the same guy, Sholom Secunda.

Interestingly, in Polish Vu Iz Dos Gesele exists as a chorus to the folk song Szła Dzieweczka Do Laseczka (above). That song, without the chorus, was a favorite of my grandmother’s because it was a favorite of her father. It is an outgrowth of an 18th century Silesian song “Szla Dzieweczka do Gajeczka”

It is, supposedly, a wedding song, which makes the last verse, in which the guy promises to beat the girl up if he ever meets her in the forest, even weirder. Grandmother never sung that one.

The chorus, in the Крутится Вертится Шар Голубой version heard in Maxim’s Youth (below) was a favorite of my grandfather’s. Both of my grandparents were born in the early 30s, while the song became popular in the USA in the late 20s.

In English Secunda’s 1926 version was re-worded after the Holocaust and sung by sisters Barry and many others.

In Russian there are a number of versions of this song, from train-oriented (see Wikipedia link above) to soppy love ones (one of which is claimed to be the original Russian text, referring, moreover, to a scarf. I am skeptical.) .

There are two versions about fighting Nazis, the classic one also from the Maxim trilogy and one by Isakovsky, author of almost every Soviet song I know by heart (Incomplete list: «Катюша»,  «Враги сожгли родную хату», «В лесу прифронтовом», «Летят перелётные птицы», «Под звёздами балканскими», «Ой, цветёт калина»).

All that would be amazing enough, but this song, with the Polish version of the music minus the chorus and a very gruesome text (“let’s go to the forest my daughter, we’ll cut you, run! run! ha-ha-ha!) is also popular in Japan!

In India the same Silesian folk song, again minus the chorus, translated into a beautiful love song with no beatings or gloating included.

Globalism, I love it.

I would be remiss if I did not note this article containing the hypothesis that the original version had a blue scarf, not a globe (although I think a blue scarf twirling above someone’s head and falling is just as unlikely as a blue globe) and the even more unlikely hypothesis that the author of the ugliest version of lyrics was Grand Duke Konstantin.