Suitability of some church music

[Peter Biddlecombe]

I sing in a choir in an Anglican church in England. In a
few weeks, the Sunday morning service will be attended
by some children from Belarus.

The choir knows a piece by Arvo Part quite well - his
Bogoroditse Dyevo ( = Ave Maria / Hail Mary ), and we're
currently intending to sing this during the service. The
text is in Russian. Are we right to expect that although
they might laugh at our Russian pronunciation, the
children and any adults with them would be pleased to
hear something 'local', and not offended by the use of
Russian language or music by an Estonian rather than a
Belarussian.

Thanks in advance,

Peter Biddlecombe

[oys...@nettkjenning.com]

As a Norwegian that travels a lot in the CIS countries, I guess I am
not the first choice to answer your question. Since noone else does
though, I try to answer you based on my experience.

One way to answer you is that Russian is almost as uncontroversial
among people from Belarus as English is in Springfiled Road in West
Belfast (I guess you could also stretch the metafore a bit further by
saying that Belarussian could be controversial in the wrong company, as
singing in Irish might not be the best idea in Shankill Road:).

Another way to answer you is that you could look upon English as the
communication protocol in north-west, Russian in north-east and Spanish
south-west (south east is more complicated). Russian is a (very useful)
language, that is all.

A third way to answer is that I, disregarding a single incident with a
hyper-nationalistic Belarussian youngster in Minsk, never have
experienced any controversy with with my Russian anywhere in the CIS,
including Estonia, Lithaunia, Ukraine, the tradistionally most
nationalistic region of Galicia, Belarus, Uzbeksitan, Kyrgyzstan or
Kazakhstan.

Please keep us posted about the visit from Belarus!

Best reghards,

Jan