A search after one’s favourite song can turn into an investigation difficult enough even for Sherlock Holmes. This time, it’s gonna be thrilling: accordion, Russia, legionaries… Do you even know what „raskosha“ is?

Our accordion school is asked for scores of someone’s favourite song each and every week. Things sometimes get rather complicated, however: once, the writing of scores has unexpectedly turned into a historical research. The task seemed simple at first – scores for „the Russian song Dolina‘“. Why those quotation marks? You’ll understand after having read this article.

Already as we were browsing the web, it rather surprised us that the song Dolina has very few videos on Youtube. Such a well known song! In the end, we chose this version by a Czech accordionist.

 

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SCORES – PDF  MSCZ  VideoScore

INSTRUCTIONAL RECORDING
Lowlands – instructional recording

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We kept wondering why the Russian original was nowhere to be found. We asked our friends from Russia, and after having listened to the abovementioned version of the song, they asked us what that Czech word „raskosha“ (роскоша) meant. What, Czech word? Why, that’s a Russian song! It soon became clear that neither Czechs, nor Russians know this word. What on earth are we singing about, then?

Only at this moment we understood that the song, as it is played in the video, simply doesn’t have a Russian original. It seemed certain that to find out how and where this song originated would require some joining of forces and search eastward of our borders, perhaps even further than we had originally expected.

Step by step, we managed to gain more information and clues and shed some light on the mysterious origins of this song. Let’s have a look:

He smoked machorka, a good tobacco, he loved a girl as a Don Cossack – These words are typical of Russian town pub songs from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. They usually tell the story of the „merry life“ of the main character.

Oh my dear „raskosha“ – Our friends from a Belarusian folklore ensemble led us onto the trail of the non-Russian and non-Czech word, which the lyrics didn’t make sense without. They told us that the word „raskosha“ came from a Belarusian-Polish dialect used up to this day in Western Belarus and that it meant a pub in a small town by the road or in a street.

Lowlands, lowlands – There is another Russian song with this name, sweeping and broody, that has either rhythmically or thematically nothing in common with our song and continues with entirely different words Раздолье широкое (wide space).

Where is the street, where is the house? and the following stanzas – The origin of these lines and melody is the clearest: they are taken from the film theme song Крутится, вертится шар голубой (Spinning, turning blue ball). That song is, by contrast, very well known in Russia. You can watch a version where the Russian part continues in Yiddish and finally in a lively American arrangement.

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Крутится, вертится шар голубой (Spinning, turning blue ball)

SCORE –  PDF  MSCZ  VideoScore

INSTRUCTIONAL RECORDING
Крутится-вертится шар голубой – instructional

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Our musical investigation has led us to a definite conclusion: the song Dolina, regarded in the Czech Republic as typically Russian, is in fact a compilation of several different songs. Yet how did this happen?

Most probably, it was created and arranged in this form by some Czech who had had the opportunity to listen to various Russian as well as Cossack songs. Then he just combined their fragments into a new one, not bad at all.

Where and when this came to pass, remains – and probably will remain – a mystery. We came up with several possible explanations:

1. The song was brought to Czechoslovakia by our legionaries from the campaign in tsarist Russia during the Civil War at the beginning of the 20th century. They’d remade it according to their liking, and perhaps also in the rhythm of the train, during their long and heroic Siberian voyage.
2. The song was created in Czechoslovakia by someone who had contacts with the Russian expats’ community, which was quite large in the interwar period.
3. The song originated in Carpathian Ruthenia between the WWI and WWII, when this territory formed a part of the Czechoslovak Republic, and from there it spread in other parts of our country.
4. The song was composed after the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army in 1945, after some accordionist had listened to various melodies among the soldiers and later wanted to show others what he remembered.

Do you have any other idea? Or do you perhaps know of any other clue to solve this puzzle? Don’t hesitate and write us!

What to say in conclusion? At the end of our investigation, we understood one thing: a song is a living organism that – as far as it fulfils some necessary criteria, such as easy-to-remember melody or „catchy“ lyrics – can live a life of its own and become widely popular. This means the most beautiful fate for any song: to become immortal. What else could a song wish for?

article | Lubomír Rákos
illustration | Yelyzaveta Libenko
scores, instructional recording | Oto and Jindra Kelíšek
published on 6/2/2016