Here's something you might be interested in.
I have been convinced to create an addendum to I am Woman (3 of 3)* in order to clarify the text and the YouTube clip.
The text of the final movement of the Gorecki is taken from a folk song of the Silesian Uprising of 1919-21. Silesia was an ethnically Polish area that was under German rule. In 1919 they attempted to throw off the German government and join the Second Polish Republic.
In the folk song, a mother is lamenting her lost son. She wants to know where he has gone and wonders if he has been killed by the enemy in the rebellion.
The images in the YouTube clip are all of infighting and the suffering of those caught and crushed in the violence. These images are supposed to connect to the infighting of the Silesian Uprising.
The village scene at the 5:30 mark is of Saddam Hussein's lethal gasing of the Kurds in the 1980's. At the time Hussein was on "our" side against Iran and The Ayatollah Khomeini.
Here is the translation of the section in the YouTube clip:
He lies in the grave
I know not where
Though I ask people
Everywhere
Perhaps the poor boy
Lies in a rough trench
Instead of lying, as he might,
In a warm bed.
Sing for him,
Little song-birds of God,
For his mother
Cannot find him.
And God's little flowers,
May you bloom all around
So that my son
May sleep happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plMd6K4_ENY
I have been convinced to create an addendum to I am Woman (3 of 3)* in order to clarify the text and the YouTube clip.
The text of the final movement of the Gorecki is taken from a folk song of the Silesian Uprising of 1919-21. Silesia was an ethnically Polish area that was under German rule. In 1919 they attempted to throw off the German government and join the Second Polish Republic.
In the folk song, a mother is lamenting her lost son. She wants to know where he has gone and wonders if he has been killed by the enemy in the rebellion.
The images in the YouTube clip are all of infighting and the suffering of those caught and crushed in the violence. These images are supposed to connect to the infighting of the Silesian Uprising.
The village scene at the 5:30 mark is of Saddam Hussein's lethal gasing of the Kurds in the 1980's. At the time Hussein was on "our" side against Iran and The Ayatollah Khomeini.
Here is the translation of the section in the YouTube clip:
He lies in the grave
I know not where
Though I ask people
Everywhere
Perhaps the poor boy
Lies in a rough trench
Instead of lying, as he might,
In a warm bed.
Sing for him,
Little song-birds of God,
For his mother
Cannot find him.
And God's little flowers,
May you bloom all around
So that my son
May sleep happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plMd6K4_ENY