In a Youtube video that's taken off on Russian social media, three young Siberian musicians perform Despacito using Russian folklore musical instruments including the balalaika-double-bass, spoons, tambourine, accordion and even a horn pipe.
Adding to the local flavour, they topped it off with performing it in the snowy forest near Novosibirsk where the temperatures already dropped to around -20 degrees in November.
Pavel Mikhailovsky, Kirill Melentyev and Vasiliy Yurchenko decided to make a winter version of the popular song. The three young men are professional musicians and the graduates of the Novosibirsk Conservatory.
The newly created ‘boys band’ was aiming for a spot in a popular Russian TV show Evening Urgant, hosted by Ivan Urgant, with a similar format to late-night American talk shows such as The Tonight Show.
In preparation for hosting a show with Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonti, the producers opened up entries for local cover versions of his world-wide hit Despacito.
The only requirement for the musical pieces was to include some form of traditional Russian instruments.
"We saw the add about the contest on Instagram. Gathered together and thought we should try. We might end up on the national TV," Yurchenko tells local Siberian media outlet Sib.Fm.
Although the Siberian remix didn’t make it to the show, it grasped the attention of the media and the online community with over 137 thousand people having streamed the video on Youtube.Fonsi, creator of the original Despacito, which has become the most-viewed YouTube video of all time with over 4 billion views, came onto the TV show where saw his song converted into almost a Russian folklore tune.
His reaction was nothing but total shock when he saw a man dressed up as a bear:
Speaking about the overwhelming global success of the tune, Fonsi said, "One month after the release of the song we noticed that in countries like Russia, in Europe and Asia people received it very well and wanted to learn the words, which is just phenomenal".
Here are some other entries picked up by the show producers:
