Birth-week Continues
Sep. 26th, 2012 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustYesterday Cal turned eight. So today is Day Two of what we usually call his "Birthweek", because when you're dealing with somebody like him, you really can't have everything on the same day--you need to space it out, or he overloads. So Thursday we're all getting together for a family dinner out, and we'll try to do something specifically fun for him over the weekend. I'm thinking we might try to catch a movie in the theatre again, just for kicks, if we can find something suitable with at least a bit of music. (I wonder if he'd like Bollywood, if he was exposed to it? I mean, on the one hand, subtitles; on the other, he used to pal around with this girl at Surrey Place who watched Bollywood clips on Youtube all the time, and learned how to sing one song they both like in what was apparently a fairly passable version of Hindi.)
Last night, meanwhile, I picked up a really chintzy DVD copy of The Avengers (almost no special features, because they save those all for the BluRay these days) and then went to choir practice, where we began work on "Oshwitsate", the single most complicated piece in our current handbook. Composed by Ruzena Danielova, a Romani woman who survived Auschwitz even though her husband and children all died there, it's probably best known for being featured in Tony Gatliff's Latcho Drom, a "musical documentary" tracing Rom culture and its diaspora back to its supposed inception, in India, through a series of songs and performances. The tune, as our choir master points out, sounds suspiciously like "Do Not Forget Me, Oh My Darling" from High Noon; the lyrics go like this:
Yai, Oshwitsate, hin baro ker
De odoy panglo miro pirano,
Beshel, beshel, gondolinel,
Yoi, opre mande po bishterel.
Oh, at Auschwitz, there is a big house
Where the man I love is imprisoned
He stays there, suffering his captivity
And forgets about me.
Yai, oda kalo chirikloro,
Lidjel mange mro liloro,
Hedjoy, lidjoy, mro romiake,
Yoi, me, beshel, Oshwitsate.
Oh, that blackbird
He will deliver my letter for me,
Take it to my husband,
Who is confined at Auschwitz.
Yoi, Oshwitsate bare bokha,
Na me amen, nane so xas,
Deya, ni oda kotor manro,
Yoi, o bokharis bi-baxtalo.
Oh, there is starvation in Auschwitz,
We have nothing at all to eat,
Mother, not even a piece of bread,
Those starving us are in bad karma.
Yoi sar me yek furkheri djava,
Le bokharis murdarava,
Sar me yek furkeri djava,
Yoi, le bokharis murdarava.
Oh, if I only have a pitchfork
I would kill the tormentors
If I only had a pitchfork.
I would kill the people starving us.
It's a complex song, specially when you get into the variant sections, and Romani is a very difficult language to begin with, at least when you're used to English. But after hearing it all the way through, what it reminded me most of all was Psalm 137, especially the very last verse, which I'd never actually read before I looked it up a couple of days back because it was quoted in an M.R. Jamesian ghost story I read by Reggie Oliver ("Quiete non Movere", from Best New Horror 23). The first two parts are probably familiar to almost everybody, especially since they've been adapted into a reggae song:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
So far, so good. But then there's this part, in which sorrow turns to anger, and the narrator essentially ends up saying: "Also, guess what? You should suffer te way you're making us suffer." (My enemies should only suffer like I'm suffering!)
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
Babies against stones, and a pitchfork through your tormentors' hearts. "It's a very human impulse," the choir master said. I agree, unfortunately.
Last night, meanwhile, I picked up a really chintzy DVD copy of The Avengers (almost no special features, because they save those all for the BluRay these days) and then went to choir practice, where we began work on "Oshwitsate", the single most complicated piece in our current handbook. Composed by Ruzena Danielova, a Romani woman who survived Auschwitz even though her husband and children all died there, it's probably best known for being featured in Tony Gatliff's Latcho Drom, a "musical documentary" tracing Rom culture and its diaspora back to its supposed inception, in India, through a series of songs and performances. The tune, as our choir master points out, sounds suspiciously like "Do Not Forget Me, Oh My Darling" from High Noon; the lyrics go like this:
Yai, Oshwitsate, hin baro ker
De odoy panglo miro pirano,
Beshel, beshel, gondolinel,
Yoi, opre mande po bishterel.
Oh, at Auschwitz, there is a big house
Where the man I love is imprisoned
He stays there, suffering his captivity
And forgets about me.
Yai, oda kalo chirikloro,
Lidjel mange mro liloro,
Hedjoy, lidjoy, mro romiake,
Yoi, me, beshel, Oshwitsate.
Oh, that blackbird
He will deliver my letter for me,
Take it to my husband,
Who is confined at Auschwitz.
Yoi, Oshwitsate bare bokha,
Na me amen, nane so xas,
Deya, ni oda kotor manro,
Yoi, o bokharis bi-baxtalo.
Oh, there is starvation in Auschwitz,
We have nothing at all to eat,
Mother, not even a piece of bread,
Those starving us are in bad karma.
Yoi sar me yek furkheri djava,
Le bokharis murdarava,
Sar me yek furkeri djava,
Yoi, le bokharis murdarava.
Oh, if I only have a pitchfork
I would kill the tormentors
If I only had a pitchfork.
I would kill the people starving us.
It's a complex song, specially when you get into the variant sections, and Romani is a very difficult language to begin with, at least when you're used to English. But after hearing it all the way through, what it reminded me most of all was Psalm 137, especially the very last verse, which I'd never actually read before I looked it up a couple of days back because it was quoted in an M.R. Jamesian ghost story I read by Reggie Oliver ("Quiete non Movere", from Best New Horror 23). The first two parts are probably familiar to almost everybody, especially since they've been adapted into a reggae song:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
So far, so good. But then there's this part, in which sorrow turns to anger, and the narrator essentially ends up saying: "Also, guess what? You should suffer te way you're making us suffer." (My enemies should only suffer like I'm suffering!)
Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
Babies against stones, and a pitchfork through your tormentors' hearts. "It's a very human impulse," the choir master said. I agree, unfortunately.
