Pesen za Bojana (Песен за Бояна)
For the last dance, I selected “Pesen za Boiana” by The Inheritance on their album Kalimara. When going through the music database to find dances we haven’t done in a good long time, I saw that this had been tagged for getting several plays. It a lovely, but haunting melody. Deryl thought it might be a sad song, so I looked it up.
Pesen za Boiana/Boyana/Bojana, Песен за Бояна, Song for Bojana, is actually a celebration of a woman from a family of nine brothers who has become a great military leader, fighting the Turks in the Pirin mountains of Bulgaria. I found a French translation and also a video with the English translation embedded (no copy and paste). By the way, that video is a mean vocal with banjo rendition from Kate Conklin & Bryan Landers. Expect to hear that on a Tuesday night in the future. Here’s the English of the French of the Bulgarian. Voivode is a Slavic term for, “is a title denoting a military leader or warlord in Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe in use since the Early Middle Ages,” (Wikipedia)
Everyone has heard of Of a woman who has become a voivode. Boyana, a fair-skinned young woman, The tenth, the only sister, Of his nine brothers, It is Boyana who leads all men. On top of the Pirin Mountains, Boyana leads the men behind this oath: “Fight the enemy bravely, Fight the enemy bravely So terrible is our fate under the Turkish yoke."