Warszawa (song)
"Warszawa" is a mostly instrumental song by David Bowie and Brian Eno originally released in 1977 on the album Low. The band Joy Division was initially called Warsaw as a reference to this song. Composition and recording The piece is intended to evoke the "very bleak atmosphere" Bowie said he experienced from his visit to Warsaw the previous year. He had to leave the recording sessions to travel to Paris where he was dealing with some legal issues. He instructed Eno to create "a really slow piece of music with a very emotive, almost religious feel to it". The melody Bowie sings in the middle part of the song are based on a recording of "Helokanie" by Polish folk choir Śląsk, although Bowie's lyrics are invented words, not words in Polish. Bowie had purchased a recording of Śląsk performing the piece during a stopover in Warsaw. The piece is in four sections. The first section features drones in octaves played on piano and synthesisers. A fanfare motif states the chord of A major which is answered by a phrase: A, B, C, transforming it to A minor. It is these notes that Eno says he heard being played repeatedly by