Tamo daleko

Tamo daleko (Serbian Cyrillic: Тамо далеко; "There, Far Away", "Over There, Far Away" or "There, Afar") is a Serbian folk song which was composed in 1916 to commemorate the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania in World War I and during which it was devastated by hunger, disease and attacks by armed bands before regrouping on the Greek island of Corfu, where many more Serbian soldiers died. It revolves around the theme of loss and longing for a distant homeland.

Along with the other World War I song, March on the Drina, it became a powerful symbol of Serbian culture and national identity and remains popular amongst Serbs in the Balkans and the diaspora.

Song

Song 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 singer describes himself as being in the land "where the lemon tree blooms yellow" and looks "far away in the distance, where the sun shines brighter" to the village where he was born.

Historian Andrej Mitrović writes of the song's "nostalgic air [and] sorrowful melody". He argues that it provides great insight into the collective psychology and overall morale of the Serbian Army during the winter of 1915. He asserts that while the song is nostalgic, the basic idea is one of optimism. Journalist Roger Cohen describes Tamo daleko as "the lament of a people uprooted". The author Robert Hudson writes that "a sense of primordial identity, linked to family and nation, is embedded in [the] song, with father and son giving up their lives for the nation".