Tamo daleko

Tamo daleko is a Serbian folk song which was composed on the Greek island of Corfu in 1916 to commemorate the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania during World War I. It is played in triple metre and begins solemnly in a minor key before switching to the relative major of the dominant key in the third line of the first verse, symbolizing hope before returning to the tonic minor key from the beginning. The lyrics to the song come in multiple versions, all of which end with the line "long live Serbia!"

The song became very popular amongst Serbian émigrés following World War I and was even played at the funeral of Serb inventor Nikola Tesla in January 1943. A symbol of Serbian culture and national identity, it came to be viewed as a form of national anthem in the Serbian diaspora during the Cold War, and some of its lyrics were prohibited alongside several other songs in Titoist Yugoslavia because they evoked the resurgence of Serbian national feeling. The identity of its writer and composer remained a matter of dispute for many decades. In 2008, historian Ranko Jakovljević discovered that Đorđe Marinković, an amateur musician from the village of Korbovo near Kladovo, was the song's original writer and composer, having composed the song in 1916 and secured its authorship rights in Paris in 1922. The song remains popular amongst Serbs in the Balkans and the diaspora.

During World War I, the Serbian Army retreated through Albania after the Central Powers invaded the Kingdom of Serbia during the winter of 1915. The Serbian Army was devastated by hunger, disease and attacks by armed bands before regrouping on the Greek island of Corfu, where many more Serbian soldiers died. Fatalities were buried at sea and surviving Serbian soldiers named those waters "the Blue Graveyard".

...
Wikipedia