Lex Anteinternet: A minor and disturbing example of how quickly war changes things. The singing of Sofia Shkidchenko.

Monday, April 4, 2022

A minor and disturbing example of how quickly war changes things. The singing of Sofia Shkidchenko.

She was a contestant on Ukraine's "Ukraine's Got Talent", kids edition, in 2017.

Seems like every nation in the world has some variant of this.

Jimmy Akin posted this on his Facebook Feed, noting how cheerful this prewar performance was, which it is. I think she was 11 at the time she sang this, and she's awesome.

I will note that yodeling isn't really a Ukrainian thing, as so far as I know, but she's super at it. Some of the lyrics here are in English, which shows how dominant English has become globally as well, and contrary to what people will claim about there being no accents in sung English, her Ukrainian accent is thick.

Well, with pipes like that, she's tried to keep a singing career up, and she ought to. She has a really good voice, and a command of it.

As recently as 2020, the yodeling thing was still going on. Here's an example from that year, at which time she was apparently 14. Here she sings in German. I can grasp some German, but not enough to be able to tell if her Ukrainian accent is equally thick in German.

You probably can't make a career of being a Ukrainian yodeler, I'm guessing, and her YouTube page shows some odd attempts at covers, such as John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads. Anyhow, here's one from last year that's clearly an attempt to cross over into being a Ukrainian pop star (heck, maybe she is a Ukrainian pop star).

As a non-Ukrainian, I have to say that this piece is both very pop, and very, even oddly, Ukrainian.

Here's a more "pop" one.

What about now?

And check out the evolution of the music, particularly the lyrics.

And this one could be right out of the Second World War.

So there you go. How to go from a kid singing "What Does The Fox Say" to ballads about killing the Russians.

Really good job there, Putin. Getting your country into a war you can't win, over dreams of imperial glory, and making a people that didn't like yours in the first place, probably hate you for another generation.

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Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

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