I remember, even a few years ago, most of the foreigners I met who visited Warsaw tended to look around, struck by its odd architecture and unruly riverside, and then ask ‘When’s the next train to Krakow?’. Yes, Krakow with its pristinely preserved Old Town and Jewish Quarter, is simpler for tourists to engage with, yet in the last few years the Polish capital has begun to transform, like Berlin before it, into a very cool and very entertaining ‘ugly duckling’. Maybe because of this complex nature, it has inspired many fine books, poems and of course songs.
Below are three of the most cherished songs inspired by Poland's capital, anthems that are familiar to almost every true child of Warsaw. I present them here, dear English-language readers, as insight into the emotional psyche of this unique city. More importantly, I wonder if in English they can ever be as moving as the originals.
From Paris with love… Niemen
Czesław Niemen sold millions of records and toured the world, even during communism (when it was next to impossible to get a passport and travel abroad), yet when he wrote his classic 1966 hymn Sen o Warszawie / A Dream of Warsaw, he was not allowed to move out of his tiny state-approved studio flat and fully express the modern, experimental jazz potential of his epic voice. This short and superficially simple ditty, maybe Warsaw's best-loved pop anthem, was not actually written in Warsaw (words by Marek Gaszyński, music by Niemen), but in Paris where he was recording songs in French, trying to crack the international market. Still, in spite of Warsaw's post-war ruin and the harsh conditions suffered by its artists, it does seem he was pining for it while away:
A Dream of Warsaw
I'm no different to you.
In my city I see
the most wonderful scenes,
things beyond belief.
I left it all my multicolour dreams.
Some day, I will stop time.
Spread my wings like a bird.
I will fly like the wind
down to where my dreams
come true in Warsaw's multicolour streets
If you wish to see a Vistula dawn,
then come and ride along with us.
You will find out the glory that can be
a Warsaw day.
From London with a hangover… T.Love
Listened to now, Niemen's song may appear simple, even primitive, but it remains popular, especially with fans of Warsaw's Legia soccer team, who howl it to high heavens whenever their team plays at home. Another more recent, though equally popular, Warsaw pop song was written in the 1990s by Zygmunt ‘Muniek’ Staszczyk of the band T.Love:
Warszawa
The day unfurls in winter light,
as I unfurl out the wrong side of bed.
I look out the window, sleep in my eyes,
the suburbs already half-dead.
Last night's spirits awaken the veins,
buses plough through melting snows.
Our concrete jungle awaiting spring rains,
the river all blackened ice floes.
When I look in your eyes, as tired as mine,
there is love for this city, as tired as I am.
Where Hitler and Stalin unleashed their designs
and springtime chokes in the sky.
The centre of town is flooded with light,
you whirl like a cloud, in and out of the beams.
Me, I am starving, so utterly starving,
but love, you'll feed me its dreams.
Oh, leafy suburbs, pathetic suburbs,
madness in bloom, all sickly green.
The river gets drunk on its own scum
while I scream, I weep and I sing.
When I look in your eyes, as tired as mine,
I see love for this city, as tired as I am.
Where Hitler and Stalin unleashed their designs
and springtime chokes up the sky.
Come autumn, the schools always call in,
while bars call the rest of us too.
The waiters pass by, still we shelter within,
I guess we'll be wasted by two.
Come autumn, I always think of the summers
as worn, as battered as our cobbled lanes.
Come autumn, we stroll, as giddy as lovers,
to howl her glorious refrain.
When I look in your eyes, as tired as mine,
I'm in love with this city, as tired as I am.
Where Hitler and Stalin unleashed their designs
and springtime smogs up the sky.
The newer song tells a much more thorough, complex story of Warsaw and its crooked charms. Still, it wasn't until I took on this translation that I became aware of how finely the author arranges the song's narrative drive. Moving down Warsaw streets, along the river, across its bridges, the song covers the way the capital changes through all four seasons. The cold darkness of winter is followed by the hungers of spring, which then turn into the slow burn of summer, ending on the thirsty disappointment of autumn. This was not something I had noticed, even though I knew the song off by heart, before starting to turn it into English.
I also learned that Warszawa was not written in the city itself, but in London, when the singer ‘Muniek’ Staszczyk was still a struggling artist, washing dishes in a Hammersmith restaurant. According to official statistics, more than 10% of Poles in the world live abroad. I myself experienced exile as a child and lived in the UK for three decades, before making my home in Warsaw again. Listening to Muniek’s words forged far from home, I wonder: is it that we truly value things when they are taken from us, or is it just easier to see them from a distance?
From the streets with a punch… Grzesiuk
Stanisław Grzesiuk, the most famous son of Warsaw's working-class Czerniaków district, was born in 1918 – the year Poland returned to world maps after 123 years of partitions. He has always been associated with the city of his birth, writing stories, fables and songs that represent Warsaw the way Poles tend to see it – brash, hardworking and at times hard-nosed. Written just after the war, the humorous tale below is about what happens when folks passing through ‘Warszawa’ forget their manners (including of course the Germans and Russians again). It was, as many Polish readers will know, recently-rediscovered and recorded to a hip-hop beat by Projekt Warszawiak, a group of young artists hailing from the Polish capital itself, their Youtube video scoring over 5 million hits:
No Way to Con, Bro, a Son of Warsaw
See the dapper tourist fella walking slowly past,
on his gob he wears a mighty frown.
Having tripped the streets of Warsaw, he barks with disgust:
‘How do you live in this forsaken town?’
Hearing that, I started seeing red
so I got him by the throat and said:
Don't be too clever cos you might never,
survive what we call nasty Warsaw weather.
No way of conning a ‘Warszawianin’,
no place on Earth badass enough to take the piss.
I might be scum to you, but here's a punch or two,
from my town go get the hell, you ain't got a clue.
Don't play no tricks, don't be a prick,
just shut your mouth, we'll try to say no more of this.
There was this Austrian chap who wore a little tash
and thought Warschau was over and ‘kaputt’.
But it was his Deutschland that got burnt down to ash,
all of his pukka plans turned out to be ‘nein gut’.
In his head he was a little wrong
so today we sing this little song:
Thought you was tough, we called your bluff,
the Ruskies and the Krauts their might wasn't enough.
Don't take the mick, bro, out of us Warsaw,
you will be leaving town inside a horse-drawn hearse.
And let the whole world know, you want to have a go,
you’ll be kipping in a morgue, renamed John Doe.
No way to con, bro, a son of Warsaw,
you want to start on us, you buy a coffin first.
The challenges of translating words set to song
Maybe it's because I was born in Warsaw that I relish the challenge, not just of translating poetry about it, but songs too. Translating lyrics is both harder and more fun than translating published verse. More fun, because once done, the work has more of chance to reach and entertain audiences. But it is also more difficult, because aside from the myriad of problems connected with translating words, they now have to be set to a melody, which can be a bit of a nightmare.
Take the above example of the song by Niemen. First of all, there is the matter of updating a slightly childish and maudlin text into something which won't jar with modern audiences. Then there is the rhyming structure, which in the case of this verse is more complex than most. When sung, all sorts of hidden rhymes and semi-rhymes reveal themselves. Words such as ‘dreams’ and ‘streets’ don't rhyme on paper, but line them up next to each other, sing them to a beat, and then all sorts of interesting things emerge.
Then there is the actual recording – Niemen really varies the way he sings each verse, changing tempo, key and rhythm in the most unusual places. Making sure the English version can be sung over the top of the original score was not easy. I had to not only toy with the text, but also learn the tune so that the two would meet and agree.
Staszczyk's Warszawa has a straightforward story to tell, the rhyme sequence is basic and the words used by the author more original than in Niemen's case, and therefore more fun to play with. There are places where slight liberties were needed with the source material – the Warsaw-born author takes a rude pop at the leafy and posh district of Żoliborz in the original, but very few English-listening audiences will understand the reference to its name, so I change it to the more generic ‘leafy suburbs’. I also toy a little with the chorus, translating it slightly differently each time, in order to retain the meaning, but also give every repeating refrain a fresh twist.
As for Grzesiuk's cheeky classic, the modern beat and timeless thuggery are relatively easy to convert into English... or so you might think. Clicking this link takes you to lyricstranslate.com and... well, I won't comment on the English translation published there, I might as well leave you, dear reader, to read and judge for yourselves.
I can't sing to save my life, but it was essential for me to find words which would perfectly match the wonderful sounds as well as the emotions aroused by these three Warsaw anthems. Having set them to English, hopefully they can find new listeners, maybe even new performers, who will be able to carry a piece of Warsaw with them beyond Poland's borders, just like some of the original authors did decades back.
Written by Marek Kazmierski, April 2017
Sen o Warszawie / A Dream of Warsaw, by Marek Gaszyński and Czesław Niemen
Warszawa by Zygmunt ‘Muniek’ Staszczyk and Janek Benedek
Nie ma cwaniaka na Warszawiaka / No way to con, bro, a son of Warsaw by Stanisław Grzesiuk and Łukasz Garlicki, Jacek Jędrasik, Szymon Orfin
Translations by Marek Kazmierski