Geneaologies of a Song

This is the original 1981 Latvian version of One Million Roses called 'Dāvāja Māriņa' or Mara's Gift composed by Raimond Pauls with lyrics by dissident Latvian poet Leons Briedis. In this clip it is performed by Aija Kukule and the young Līga Kreicberga.



The lyrics in this version are about the relationship between a mother and daughter. According to Gunta Bisenieks it is 'more or less about the goddess Mara and her daughter and the pain the mother suffers throughout each generation when she is bestowed good fortune in giving birth to a daughter but has no means to raise her. The pain is all about the miserable life they are enduring and having to watch her child suffer'.

It is reinterpreted in 1983 by Raimond Pauls again for the Soviet Russian singer Alla Pugecheva though this time the lyrics are by the celebrated Russian poet Andre Voznesensky. In this version the subject of the lyrics becomes the early 20th century painter Niko Pirosmani and his doomed love for a French actress. It is here that the central symbol of the one million roses makes it's appearance as the roses that Pirosmani vainly heaps upon his lover.




Somehow the celebrated Japanese enka singer Kato Tokiko hears this song, perhaps on one of her tours through the Soviet Union and covers it in 1987 in Japanese where it becomes a major hit throughout Asia. This time, the lyrics remain the same as the Russian version.



And here is the Korean version by Sim Soo-Bong from 1997. Here, the title remains the same but Sim completely reinterprets the lyrics into an injunction to bestow love upon an alien that has come to our planet and longs to return to it's home. Certain lines in the song seem to suggest that Sim perhaps may have been referencing Antoine du St. Exupery's 'the Little Prince' in the idea of a traveling being from another planet and the repeated motif of roses.