We just finished creating a music video for the song, “The Dragon,” from Ken’s album, Outlaws and Bystanders.
It seemed like a sign that shortly after the album’s release, a movie about (with a twist) the historical Dracula – Dracula Untold – would also come out. So we thought it only made sense to create our first real music video for “The Dragon,” which is a song about the real Vlad III, Prince (actually “Voivode”) of Wallachia.
Vlad III
We had long been fans of a traditional Ukrainian folk song that was often sung by Owaine Phyfe (who sadly passed away in 2013) called “Hutsulka Ksenia.” It was in Ukrainian, so I had no clue what he was singing:-P. But the tune was absolutely beautiful. So I decided I would learn it. Lisa, the language geek, asked me if I wanted the Urkainian translated for my version. I said I would. But when she finished the translation, we could see that it was a fairly uninspiring love song. A guy is basically asking a girl if he could sing love songs to her on his alpenhorn. Sooo, Lisa came up with a cool idea. Since the song comes from the region of the Carpathian Mountains, which is super close to Wallachia, why not make the song about Dracula? Hey, cough medication has inspired worse ideas:). So she wrote “The Dragon.”
Below is what Lisa wrote about the song on the liner notes from the album:
The Dragon
(Hungary, 1462)
Vlad Tepes was inducted into the Order of the Dragon, a Christian chivalric order, at the age of five. Vlad and his brother Radu spent six years at the Ottoman court as hostages for their father’s cooperation; Radu converted to Islam and became a vassal of the Ottoman rulers, eventually betraying Vlad and fighting against him. In 1462, the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus arrested Vlad and supported Radu, a puppet of the Ottoman empire, on the Wallachian throne. Vlad wasn’t done.
“Hutsulka Ksenia” is a beautiful Ukrainian folk song, but the lyrics are pretty dull stuff about a man serenading a pretty girl. The Hutsul tribe lives in the part of Ukraine that juts into the Carpathian Mountains, not far from where Vlad was born.
And here is the video
The lyrics are on the liner notes for the album, which you can find here: https://www.ravenboymusic.com/Outlaws-and-Bystanders-notes.pdf