The Song of Igor’s Campaign - Epic Slavic Music

Music, video and vocals by Farya Faraji, including recordings of traditional East Slavic instruments. Massive thanks to my friends Étienne Nantel for lending his epic presence as our Igor, and Kayvik Roy for lending us his magnificent armour. Please note that this isn’t reconstructed historical music of the Kievan Rus’ culture--though heavily rooted in that culture’s instrumentation, it remains fundamentally modern music with a historical theme. Also note that resources on Old East Slavic pronunciation are difficult to find at best, so take my pronunciation here with a grain of salt. With this one, I wanted to pay homage to the East Slavic medieval culture of the Kievan Rus’, one of the cultures I am personally most fascinated by. The text which I sing consists of the opening lines (first and fifth stanzas) of the “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,“ an epic poem in Old East Slavic, the common ancestor language of Rusyn, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian, before they diverg