Dream of Living
"Dream of Living" is a song by the Talas Mor-Folk ensemble Eski Ün, released in 2021 as the English-language version of its Iradi song "Jashoo Tüshü". It is the only Mor-Folk song to have found a wide audience outside Irad.[1]
Music
The ensemble's komuz, choor and voices, singing a melody adapted from Syro-Iradi chant, are set over the dark synthesizers common to the "Mor" genres in a slow, ephemeral illbient production, made with a former member of the Nurzhan Mor-Wave group Umay-9. Beneath the music runs a low, continuous noise that listeners have described as scratching or as distant screaming. Eski Ün has never said what it is. Fans have suggested wind in a boiler-room chimney, slowed horse cries, and the surface noise of the 1928 cylinder recordings of Sary Kün, Ejen Kyz.[1][2]
Lyrics
The song is sung in the first person plural. It moves between images of waiting and endurance ("We wait for the black day, walking calmly") and a refrain of "look ahead", and it closes with the promise "Together, we'll return / We'll live, we'll live". The ensemble has said that it sings "about loneliness and the road home".[3] Listeners in Irad have read the song as being about emigration, about the clans lost in 1916, or about the division of the country, and some clergy objected to its "black day" (kara kün), a phrase associated with Morkhan.[2]
Chorus
We've done, we've stayed strong,
Night came, day came, just like that.
Live it all, live it well,
Live it up, live it up, look ahead.
Verse
The dark island, the lonely one,
We've taken the middle path, gone back again.
Our eyes towards the clouds,
Mother and father, mother and father, look ahead.
Chorus
We've done, we've stayed strong,
Night came, day came, just like that.
Live it all, live it well,
Live it up, live it up, look ahead.
Verse
Through our days, through our dark days, look ahead,
Through our nights, through our dark nights, look ahead.
Together, we'll return,
We'll live, we'll live, look ahead.
Chorus
We've done, we've stayed strong,
Night came, day came, just like that.
Live it all, live it well,
Live it up, live it up, look ahead.
Together, we'll return,
We'll live, we'll live, look ahead.
Chorus
We've done, we've stayed strong,
Night came, day came, just like that.
Live it all, live it well,
Live it up, live it up, look ahead.
Reception
The song was little known outside Irad until it was used on the soundtrack of the fourth season of the American television series True Detective, Night Country, in 2024. Its streams abroad rose sharply after the broadcast, and it is now the most-streamed Iradi recording outside Irad apart from Karakush's "Ak Börü". The Talas Herald noted that the series made it the first Iradi song many Americans had heard since Swift Hooves.[4] In Irad, the song was sung at candlelit vigils during the 2023 Student Protests in Talas. Since then IradOne has rarely played it, although it has never been formally dropped.[1][2]
References
- ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2024). 'Far from the Teahouse: Mor-Folk Online.' Vol. 16, pp. 21–40.
- ^ Journal of Central Asian Popular Music (2023). 'Noise, Chant and the Iradi Night: Listening to "Dream of Living".' Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 55–73.
- ^ Talas Herald (27 June 2019). 'Mor-Folk ensemble cancels Iyık Janyl teahouse concert.' Talas.
- ^ Talas Herald (24 February 2024). 'An American detective series makes a Talas teahouse band famous.' Talas.