Polish Tango 1932: Adam Aston & Ork. H. Warsa - Bajka (A Fairytale)

Adam Aston & Ork. Henryka Warsa – Bajka [A Fairytale] tango (I. Kranowski), Syrena-Electro 1932 (Polish)

NOTE: There’s no doubt, this tango is one of the most beautiful songs composed in the 20th century history of the Polish chanson. It was composed in 1932 by an amateur composer and song performer Igo Kranowski, during his holidays in Jaremcze, a spa in prewar Polish Eastern Carpathians. The pensive mood of this dreamlike melody and its lyrics (written also by Kranowski) : You were a fairytale to me / for my love was a dream, a repose, which will never come back – made this song an immediate hit. Aston's dreamy voice and Wars’ subtle arrangement make altogether a lovely performance, indeed.

Therefore, a slideshow is a selection of some dream-like photographs by Jan Bułhak: one of the masters of prewar photography in Poland. The selection captures some views of another dreamlike place on Earth: which is prewar Polish city of Wilno (now Vilnius, the capital of the Lithuanian Republic). It was Jan Bułhak’s birth place and he often returned to Wilno and its surroundings, leaving behind unparalleled photographic portraits of those lands, lost by Poland after 1945.