Use of The Name
The Yiddish folk song Tumbalalaika mentions the instrument.
In 1989 Kramer Guitars released an "Electric Balalaika": the Kramer Gorky Park. This was just before the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. It was actually just an electric guitar with a triangular shape that was based on the original instrument.
The "Wind of Change" by the Scorpions mentions the instrument.
The MiG-21 is nicknamed Balalaika because of the shape of its wings.
The Beatles' 1968 track "Back in the U.S.S.R" references the instrument in its final verse ("Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out/Come and keep your comrade warm").
Kusumi Koharu performed a song and dance titled "Balalaika" which has also been flawlessly mirrored in the Hatsune Miku phenomenon.
One of the unofficial slogans of the Jewish Defense League was "Bombs for balalaikas"..
Firewater's album Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire seventh track is named "Balalaika" but does not appear to contain one.
In the 2006 anime Black Lagoon, the nickname of the local Russian mob boss is "Balalaika".
The rock band from Pasadena, Ozma plays a balalaika on the song "Flight Of Yuri Gagarin"; it is derived from their partially Russian themed album Double Donkey Disc. The album has a mirrored picture of a donkey playing the balalaika on the front cover.
Bob Clampett's 1943 cartoon Book Revue features Daffy Duck dressed as Danny Kaye singing in a Russian accent. He remembers his "native willage", with people " . . . sitting on their balalaikas playing their samovars", a misuse of both words.
Camper Van Beethoven's 1985 album Telephone Free Landslide Victory includes a track called "Balalaika Gap".
Read more about this topic: Balalaika
Famous quotes containing the words the name, use, the and/or name:
“There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The elephant sneezed
And fell on his knees,
And that was the end of the monk,
the monk, the monk.”
—Unknown. Animal Fair. . .
New Treasury of Children’s Poetry, A; Old Favorites and New Discoveries. Joanna Cole, comp. (1984)
“Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore than name. Are they all alike. I think so.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)