Songs That Tell a Story

I would like a wine. The purpose of the wine is to get me drunk. A bad wine will get me as drunk as a good wine. I would like the good wine. And since the result is the same no matter which wine I drink, I’d like to pay the bad wine price.
Steve Martin

Today's post is about songs that tell a story.

Video #1 is a dance song from North Macedonia that tells the story about a rabbit on his way to Salonika to get married. He had several adventures on the way, and almost got killed by the hunters and their dogs.  It has a surprise ending!

The song is Zaiko Kokorajko and the dance to it is Arap.

The dancers in Video #1 and Video #2 are from Vienna, Austria.

Video #2 is Sadi Moma, a song from the Pirin region of Bulgaria. It describes a young woman who planted a grape vine. The vine became really big and the grapes from it produced barrels of wine and rakia so strong the soldier who drank it was out of commission for a week. He must have had one hell of a hangover when he finally woke up. Was it good wine or bad wine?



Sadi Moma also underwent a second incarnation as the Free Software Song. It wasn't the same guy who had the hangover after drinking the wine and rakia.



Video #4 is the Dance of Zalongo (you can read the story and the translation of the song here.) This was a really dramatic event that occurred in Greece in 1815. It's similar to the story of Masada, where the inhabitants chose mass suicide over slavery.

The music is in 7/8 (pineapple-apple-apple). There is no dancing in the video, although there is a picture of women in Greek folk costumes, as well as a statue that depicts women dancing to their deaths on the rocks below.



If you enjoyed this you may also like:

The Dance of Osman Taka

The Rebels (Haidouks) in Bulgarian Folk Songs


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.