Danish choir performs Belarusian folk song and blows up social media
A video of the Danish women's choir Konur performing the Belarusian folk song "Shto y pa moru" went viral on Instagram. The clip, in which the girls sing it a cappella in a church in the French town of Spelancato, has already garnered 1.4 million views and hundreds of enthusiastic comments from both Belarusians and foreigners, Onliner noted .
The ensemble specializes in multi-part performances of folk music from various regions of the world, including Eastern Europe, Georgia, Corsica, and Bulgaria. However, only the Belarusian song became so popular on social media; other videos on Konur's account only gathered a few thousand views.
The vocal ensemble from Copenhagen, consisting of 25 women, is led by singer and composer Nini Julia Bang. The singers perform without sheet music, paying special attention to the sound of voices and polyphony.
"Shto y pa moru" is a Belarusian folk circle dance song. Its lyrics tell the story of a flock of white swans swimming on the blue sea, and an eagle that scatters the birds. The evocative plot is combined with repetitive lines, characteristic of folk song folklore.
In a conversation with an Onlíner journalist, Nini Julia Bang said that she first heard "Shto y pa moru" performed by the Polish ensemble Laboratorium Pieśni. At that time, the Dane lived in Poland and worked in a Wrocław theater, where folk songs were often used as a basis for performances. Nini says that the folk ballad seemed incredibly beautiful and powerful to her — she wanted to "learn a composition full of such power and joy."
"We really like the images embedded in this song: the sea, the swan, the eagle, feathers collected to make a pillow for a loved one. We always sing it with immense joy. If space allows, we place the drummer in the center, two circles of singers line up around her, and we ourselves go out to dance to the audience to envelop them in a wave of energy that this song carries.
Performing folk songs is a wonderful thing. I often think about the people through whose lives these songs have passed. I really want to pay tribute to them and perform everything with dignity, although I will always be just a guest who has never fully grasped the language or the culture. We often talk about a song as a living entity that passes through us — as if there is a huge ocean of folk songs and we just need to let them flow through us.
We are deeply grateful to everyone we have learned from, and to all the cultures whose songs we perform. Folk singing is a rich and ancient tradition, and I hope it will last forever. In our 'age of screens,' it is also a powerful way to unite and remember our roots and ancestors."
This is far from the first surge in the song's popularity outside Belarus. For example, the video by Laboratorium Pieśni, which inspired the founder of the Danish choir, has garnered over 17 million views on YouTube. The same version was used as a background sample in rapper Brutto's track "Kinoteatr 'Druzhba'."
Even more popular at one time was the trap version by German DJ OmegaSign — it gathered 28 million views.
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