“Sarajevo” is a popular Christmas song in my house. It is a song by the rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which absolutely does not sound like the name of a rock band. “Trans-Siberian” makes me think of a stuffy train across frozen Russian tundra. “Orchestra” suggests suits and white shirts and giant wooden string instruments.
When I saw the band perform live in 2016, I realized the name couldn’t be further from the truth.
Instead of fur coats or suits, the clothes looked ordinary, every day. Instead of rows of hollow wooden cases and white shirts, there were electric guitars and hairdos moving wildly in the space around most of the players. And they didn’t even come from Siberia or anywhere in Russia.
You can imagine my disappointment.
Granted, a flight from Siberia to Phoenix would have been about 22 hours worth of flying. That would be an exhausting tour.
And the concert was not bad at all. It was nice and winter-y except for the fire-breathing dragon.
I always seem to forget about the fire-breathing dragon.
The dragon was not real, to my disappointment. It was a video on screen. The pyrotechnics on stage that warmed the whole arena were real. And warm.
Every episode of The Magic School Bus starts with Arnold saying, “Please let this be a normal field trip.” This concert was not a normal field trip and was not a normal orchestra.
I had a great time
So this not-Trans-Siberian not-Orchestra plays a song called "Sarajevo." Sarajevo is the city in which Franz Ferdinand was killed by Gavrilo Princip, triggering the start of the First World War. The TSO song is based on a different incident: cellists who played Christmas carols for twenty-two days in 1992 after the city was bombed. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/08/world/death-city-elegy-for-sarajevo-special-report-people-under-artillery-fire-manage.html?pagewanted=all
The song combines the Christmas melodies of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “Carol of the Bells.”
Putting all this in words makes it sound much more mish-mashed than the song actually is.
I love this song. It starts with strings and then the bells come in and the strings get more and more intense until the ending when the guitar is just wailing.
Can Christmas songs even have a wailing guitar like that? Imagine if Jingle Bell Rock was hitting those kind of notes.
That would be a great version of Jingle Bell Rock. Someone should do that.
TSO is a rock band. The Christmas music is exactly what I expect from a rock band.
Because what the song at first suggests, Russian violins performing about a seige that also has dragons, is just a little bit too much for me to take in all at one time.
