Archive for the ‘Songs’ Category4 December 2011 A funny song for the New Year concert, in the style of the old tractor-station songs:
Oh my Belarus, my iron brother,
you ploughed this field for thirty years.
You coughed, you stopped, you started again,
you were like our mother-in-law.
But you are rust now at the end of the field,
and we all come to say goodbye.
The audience in Kyzyl-Adyr knew the tractor. Everyone had a story. The mother-in-law verse was cut by the district office. I sing it only at home. 12 September 2010 A shepherd from the high pasture married a girl from the village last Saturday. They asked me for a song. I had none for a shepherd, so I made one at the table, between the lamb and the tea:
You counted sheep, now count the days,
the days are fewer than the sheep.
But a day with her is a hundred sheep
and nobody has ever stolen it.
The groom wept, the bride laughed, the sheep stayed outside in the yard and listened. 2 November 2008 Her sister married a boy from Talas. At the toi I sang the old wedding song, the kerez of the bride, and the young people filmed it on their telephones. Now my voice is in the telephones in Talas. A strange world.
Go, my bird, to the city of stone,
take the mountain wind in your sleeve.
When the city is too loud for sleeping,
open your sleeve. 21 March 2008 The first day of spring. Cholpon asks me to write the song we sing at the door, the one that the children sing when they carry the green shoots from house to house:
Open the door, open the door,
spring is standing on the step.
She has no shoes, she walked from the south,
give her a plate of something warm.
Open the door, open the door,
she will leave a flower in the bowl.
I wrote it for the children's group in 1968. Now I hear it in places where I never taught. |