Mother Land
When I was a child, my mother would sing Ukrainian songs to me every evening, until I turned five. On the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion, I needed to hear my mother's lullaby again. Holding back her tears, she sang it to me on the phone.
I left Ukraine when I was seventeen, and from that moment I rarely saw my mother. On the 27th of February, she fled the war and came to me in Berlin by evacuation train. War forced her to leave her life behind and start a new one in Germany. It also placed us in a small flat, where we started living together again.
The common experience of unbearable pain, hate, fear, but also love, pride, and hope, brought us closer and led us through personal transformations. The unexpected circumstances we found ourselves in made our parent-child bond flourish into an adult relationship. The project “Mother Land” became an honest expression of it.
This body of work is also a condemnation of Russian aggression, and the death and destruction it brought to Ukraine. Such an autobiographic macro-example of one family represents the realities of forced emigration caused by war. It brings attention to millions of lives that were broken by imperialistic ideas, intolerance, and lust for power in Russia.
Songs Translation by Tania Rodionova
Sound Recording, Mix and Mastering by Sasa Strauss
Sleep my grandchild, sleep tight,
Sleep my grandchild, sleep tight,
You’re my little Tatar, my light.
And a Tatar once that heard,
And a Tatar once that heard,
She flew away like a bird.
To the open field she flew,
And she picked a bunch of herbs,
And she slapped her on the face.
“My dear daughter, Hannusyna,
As I cradled you, embraced,
Never did I slap you on the face.”
“How do you know: I’m Hanna?
How do you know: I’m Hanna?
When was I then taken?”
“Dark cloud was coming,
The horde was attacking,
And then you were taken.”
Sleep my grandchild, sleep tight,
Sleep my little Tatar, my light.
There is a green grove
Under a hill, high-high.
The grove is nice and dense,
As if it’s heaven in the sky.
Under the grove,
a river winds its way, way.
Like glass it shines,
And down the valley, runs away.
And by the river, in the shade,
The boats are firmly tied, tied.
Three willow trees bent there,
As if they want to cry.
Because the summer will be gone,
Cold winds will blow and blow,
And their leaves once will be brown,
And with the water they will flow.
To you, my dear river,
Your spring will come one day, one day.
And youth won’t ever come,
Won’t come back anyway!
The fog is over the ravine, over the valley,
The fog is over the ravine, over the valley.
In the fog nothing can be seen,
In the fog nothing can be seen.
Except the oak tree, standing tall and green,
Except the oak tree, standing tall and green.
Under that tree, there was a deep well,
From that well, a girl drew water with a pail.
And she drowned her pail, golden, hard
And she broke the young Cossack’s heart.
“And the one who brings the pail to me
Will step on a wedding towel with me”.
And the young Cossack agreed,
And the young Cossack agreed.
“I will bring that pail to you
And step on a towel with you”.
In the fog nothing can be seen,
In the fog nothing can be seen.
Four oxen I graze
In the green lawn.
My dear found a new love,
My Ivan left me at dawn.
Hey, my oxen, hey!
My Ivan left me at dawn.
Four oxen I graze,
They carry a yoke and a chain.
Why did you, Ivanko,
Kiss my white face in vain?
Hey, my oxen, hey!
Kiss my white face in vain?
How many times you kissed me,
So many stars I see in the sky
Let you, Ivan, never hear me,
How bitter for you I cry.
Hey, my oxen, hey!
How bitter for you I cry.
On the pasture, poppies bloomed, where the hill goes high,
Five sisters, beloved daughters made their mother smile.
Five sisters, five swans strolled in the yard,
Open-hearted and friendly, in the dews they grew up.
To that green yard, one day, bright-eyed lads came,
Got acquainted, fell in love and merged their fates.
So the sisters went all over the homeland roads,
And the mother hid her grief in the shawl of thorns.
Make them happy, dear God, the mother prayed,
Don’t ever punish or avoid them, dear Fate,
Let them happily see their kids and grandkids,
Let them happily live all together in peace.
On the pasture, poppies wilted and thinned out,
Five sisters got their heads all snowy white.
The flock of swans flies in the blue sky, in the sky high,
No, the mother’s memory doesn’t ever wilt or die.
