Songfacts®:

• Gogol Bordello Musical director and lead singer Eugene Hütz teams up with fellow East European Regina Spektor for this song. He explained to Artist Direct how the collaboration came about:
  
  "I was finishing the song and I thought this kind of sums up this whole Eastern European soul condition goes global, and I thought, 'Yeah, this needs to be spoken from several point of views. And it needs to be somebody who understands not only post immigration trauma, but post war trauma.' Because we were all born and raised with people in our family with bullet wounds, and you could see them in arms and legs of your grandmothers and grandfathers, so it's like 'Wow! If that would only be like five centimeters over, I would not be here.' That kind of thing is like scratching the surface of Eastern European bond. So I thought, 'It has to be someone who understands all of this stuff,' because the song kind of dictates characters like that who stand behind it. It's very heavy stuff, like death is actually life affirming that kind of thing.
  
  It just occurred to be that Regina has all of those qualities. I wasn't going to backpack to Uganda to find a person when that person was right there. We do our best to meet up, to keep our diner club going between the tours because we are small group of Eastern European musicians and artists here. So I showed her the song and I was really excited that she liked it. In fact I think that she elevates the song because when I sing, I don't know if you can really hear the melody. I'm just a different kind of singer. You can hear other things, but maybe melody is not… I can write great melodies, but for you to know I wrote a great melody it's going to take Regina Spektor to sing it [Laughs]. It is one of those situations I have to deal with constantly. It's quite possible I'd be a greater writer for other people."