Opposition anthem in Belarus: The Soundtrack to a summer of hope

In Grodno, near the border between Lithuania, Belarus and Poland came at the weekend, thousands of for the election rally of the Belarusian opposition candidate, Svetlana Tichanowskaja. In the three hundred thousand inhabitants of the city her husband, the arrested Blogger Sergei Tichanowskij, who wanted to stand as a candidate in the presidential election next Sunday was the count in may.

In the Park of friendship of the people who stand up for change, gather and sing together in Belarusian the song “walls”, which sounds like a Soundtrack to this summer of hope: “Destroying the walls of the prison! / If you long for freedom, take it!“, it is in the chorus of Sergei Tichanowskij together with Sergei Kosmas-played song, whose Text is an adaptation of the Minsk poet Andrei Chadanowitsch.

The original lyrics of the Polish singer-songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski wrote in 1978. Two years later, following the establishment of the first independent trade Union, it was solidarity to the anthem of the struggle against the rule of Polish United workers ‘ party in Poland. The chorus is: “And the walls will fall, fall, fall / And the old world is buried.” The song of Kaczmarski has indirectly contributed to the fall of the Berlin wall, because in Poland, obviously, was that a bloodless form of the end of Communist rule in the Soviet area of influence is possible, if only enough people lose Faith in the omnipotence of the state apparatus. “Walls” describes how to a song from the singing of masses for their struggle is taken over and ceases to belong to the singer.

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Kaczmarski, in turn, took the melody of the Catalan singer-songwriter Lluís Llach, who had written in 1968 with “L’estaca” (The stake), the anthem of the Catalan struggle against Franco’s dictatorship. Since the song was banned in Spain, buzzed Llach is only the melody, his listeners knew the Text. “The stake” was for Llach is the symbol of a rotten freed the way for the state to remove joint forces and so the Bound may be free.

“What terms are incomprehensible, it is”

Polish poetry is a valuable currency in a time, as in Poland, the rule of law from a democratically elected government is called into question. Parallel to the election campaign of the Svetlana Tichanowskaja in Belarus, the American theorist of non-violent resistance, James Lawson, at the funeral of human rights activist John Lewis in Atlanta, cited the Polish poet Czes?aw Mi?osz. 1988 Mi?osz wrote in the poem “sense”: “When I die, I see the under lining of the world. The other side, behind the bird, the mountain and the sinking of the sun. They are calling for it to decipher the true meaning. What has not voted, will vote. What is incomprehensible, is understood.“

James Lawson recalls the beginnings of the black civil rights movement and the fact that, at the time, no one knew what exactly to do. “We know what is wrong, and brought it on the Agenda of the Nation. Black lives matters“, it reverberates through the mourning congregation in Atlanta. The only correct way, the heritage of John Lewis to compete, today, to take the Constitution of the United States, literally, and to grant equal rights for all, says Lawson.

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