LaVar, LaMelo, and LiAngelo Ball touched down in Lithuania today ahead of the kids’ scheduled debut for their new team, Vytautas Prienu. Their appearance was cause for a pretty wild welcome party.
It’s a lot, but the Balls are all celebrities at this point—they’ve seen plenty of cameras and journalists, probably every day. What’s much more unique to this scene is the song playing in the background: “Welcome To Lithuania,” which, per USA Today, was sung live at the airport by Jurgis Didziulis, who fronted the Lithuanian ska-funk band InCulto.
It seems like “Welcome To Lithuania” is InCulto’s signature song, because it was also the go-to refrain for this Lithuanian basketball announcer when news broke that the Balls would be playing there.
Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:
It’s on the Amber coast
A place where it rains
We don’t have any mountains
Just two forests and plains.
Welcome to Lithuania,
Welcome to Lithuania,
Welcome to Lithuania
The land of the beautiful ladies
It may well be that I’m just desperate to find any glimmer of fun in this cold, cold January, but: I love this song, and I’m so happy that it’s apparently the very first thing LaMelo and LiAngelo heard as they arrived in their unfamiliar new home. Lithuania should buy a Super Bowl TV spot just to play this song, which is so catchy that I’m currently considering booking a trip to watch some low-level basketball and check out the Devil Museum.
Unfortunately, InCulto seems to be broken up. But they live on through their timeless anthem, and this incredible 2010 Eurovision performance of “Eastern European Funk” on Youtube. Though, as the video description bluntly notes, “This song did not qualify for the final.”