This video of a 13-year-old Pioneer girl in Belarus named Ksyusha Degelko singing a song "I'm From the Country" to a hip-hop beat has gone viral on By-net and had already 600,000 views on April 25 -- but seems more than a little tongue-in-cheek and a bit meta, even from one so young. (And yes, she's already been mashed up with Rebecca Black's "Friday" -- and worse.)
You get the impression she realizes -- as Sannikov explained everyone is realizing now -- that she lives in a dictatorship, and is poking a bit of fun at it by being absolutely straight-faced, singing about long skirts instead of mini-skirts, and her town, Soviet-like, named "October," and herself as a leader of the Pioneers (well, the official Belarusian Youth Organization as it is called now.)
The KGB has evidently sensed something is "up", naviny.by and the Belarusian radio station Evroradio report, and has come to her town and poked around to determine if the song is really patriotic. The song was written by a teacher, Andrei Pauk, who led a contest in a local children's cultural center.
The KGB was said to be particularly interested in these lines:
"Долой мини-юбки! Короткое, узкое! Теперь покупать будем всё белорусское!", "Достанем из недр наших фосфор и калий, чтобы в достатке работал аграрий!"
"Down with the mini-skirt! Short and narrow! Now we'll only buy everything Belarusian!
We'll reach to the depths for our phosphorus and potash so our agriculture will work to the fullest!"
(Well, it rhymes in Russian, and sounds a lot funnier, believe me.)
But Ksyusha says she didn't upload the video, some one in her circle of friends must have put it on Vkontakte, the Russian social network.
She's worked her way up to win the provincial finals, and I guess they are waiting to see if she will be the victor in the national contest. So far, the authorities have refused to show the entire video on TV, but a news program ran excerpts.
BTW, the skittish Belarusian Service of Radio Liberty will likely give this story a pass because *gasp* the little girl sings in Russian. That isn't supposed to happen in Belarus, where people are supposed to speak Belarusian. Even Evroradio had to ding her and ask her if she knew any Belarusian songs; she said she knew Belarusian but couldn't think of any off the top of her head. Poor Ksyusha has also had to put up with all those hate-comments any young girl has to put up with on social media sites.
