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"Dziesma, ar ko tu sāksies?" (Song, What Will You Start With?) has been originally performed by Menuets (composer — Imants Kalniņš, lyrics — Imant's brother Viktors Kalniņš). The song was and still is one of the most significant Latvian protest songs against the soviet system and soviet censorship, made as a not-so subtle scream for freedom, thus after the song became popular, it was soon "non-officially" banned. As well as after performing this song again in 1982, the band Menuets was forbidden to have concerts outside a local stage of Popov's Factory, which again "non-officially" meant the end of the band 1982.
The first recording was made in 1979 or 1980. It got second place in an annual soviet Latvian song contest "Mikrofons 80" (letter voting driven), but due to its lyrics wasn't shown on television and wasn't even put among other songs on the contest's recording tape. The song was remarkably popular among the people, so there is a grounded doubts about its place in the contest, because the first place got lesser known, politically neutral and not very popular song, believable, being secretly chosen by the contest's managers. Such practice wasn't anything extraordinary: often lesser popular songs got higher places than other popular one, in which the soviet criticism was too clear.
In time of the collapse of Soviet Union, the song was frequently singed and it has never lost its popularity and, arguably, has become a part of Latvian folklore: being widely song by choirs, having different titles and lyrical variations.
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