January 01, 2009

In Search of Bards

How It All Began

In the fall of 1986, Soviet television broadcast a landmark event. It was a two-hour program called “Let’s Join Hands, My Friends” (Возьмемся за руки, друзья), whose title was taken from a famous song by Bulat Okudzhava.

It’s not that there’d never been any previous mention about the two or three generations of guitar-playing poets – known here as “bards.” Yet mentioning the name of the exiled, avowedly anti-Soviet singer Alexander Galich had been tacitly prohibited, and Yuly Kim had just said farewell to his required pseudonym, “Yuly Mikhailov,” which he’d used when songs he’d written appeared in film credits. What was remarkable is that this was the first time in the many years of television, which didn’t have independent channels yet (and now it doesn’t have them anymore) that people whose songs the entire country was singing were broadcast.

The program began with archival scenes of the young bards Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava. Then came an enormous concert, where master performers such as Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yury Kukin, Yevgeny Klyachkin, and the young Veronica Dolina, Vadim Egorov, and Oleg Mityayev sang two songs apiece. The program finally concluded with the title song by Okudzhava. The show was rebroadcast numerous times, and there were attempts to redo it in later years, but no concert evoked the same response as the original.

Thus began the “legalization” of the genre that has no single, generally recognized definition. Some call it “author’s song,” some call it “bardic song,” and some “amateur song,” though calling the works of Vysotsky, Galich, Okudzhava, and Kim — professional poets with divine gifts — “amateur songs” is peculiar to say the least. In any event, this program signalled the start of a process that continues to this day, albeit with recent signs of decline.

Certainly Okudzhava and Vysotsky made recordings before 1986. Each had released one or two LPs, but no more. This speaks to the conditions at that time for less significant performers, who may not have been banned but also weren’t being promoted. So it was that 1986 witnessed the beginnings of a breakthrough. Alexander Galich’s name was no longer forbidden. The state record company Melodiya released a series of recordings, Vladimir Vysotsky In Concert (eventually numbering more than 20), and began bringing out works by the genre’s living legends. The bards’ concerts lost their underground, semi-hidden character, and singing poets returned to the stadiums.

author’s song – to use that term – began in the fifties with Yury Vizbor, who played guitar and sang heartfelt verses about the mysterious country of Madagascar, the distant Fann Mountains of Tajikistan, the Arctic’s Rasvumchor Plateau, and other exotic places. There was nothing dissident in his songs. They were completely consonant with the Khrushchev-era “Thaw” and expanded the Soviet citizen’s internal freedom only just a bit.

In Vizbor’s wake came Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yury Kukin, and many other not-too-bad artists who sang about the forested taiga, the frozen tundra, geology and mountain climbing. True, Gorodnitsky would later produce more than a few songs on Russian history, drawing transparent parallels between Russia’s past and its present, but for now his aesthetics were those of “a train platform drenched in sun” and “leather jackets thrown in the corner.” Incidentally this is when Galich entered the genre, writing talented yet utterly loyal songs like Farewell, Mama, Don’t Grieve (До свиданья, мама, не горюй).

The situation started changing in the 1960s, when Galich began to create a completely different type of song, one that addressed the most tragic aspects of Soviet reality. Vysotsky and Kim were younger than Galich. Vysotsky came to author’s song via the theater and Kim from a teachers’ training institute. They led the genre onto a whole new level, adding a tragic and vivid social overtone to the romantic song. This did not make the previous songs about skis, trains, and the Far North any less brilliant. However, compared with Galich’s unsparing verses, Kim’s acidly ironic songs, and Vysotsky’s heartrending compositions, such tourist songs suddenly assumed another, more modest, position.

The poet Osip Mandelstam’s immortal formula hits the nail on the head: “All works of world literature can be divided into those written with permission, and those written without. The first kind is garbage, but the second is stolen air.” The best songs of Vysotsky, Kim, and the majority of Galich’s songs fit neatly into the second category. They were written without permission and despite the culture that was propagandized on television, radio, and newspapers.

Old Songs About Important Things

As to the contemporary state of author’s song in Russia, it is obvious that Mandelstam’s first category – the “permitted” songs – is winning. True, Vysotsky and Galich are not banned. You can hear them on television and buy their recordings, but there is no new material, as both passed away decades ago.

Today, the most popular bardic songs on television, radio, and among the public, are the “permitted” songs that possess all the technical hallmarks of the genre, but none of their social “bite.” Oleg Mityayev is the most successful of the living and actively working Russian bards. At the 1986 concert, a very young Mityayev performed, How Great We’re All Gathered Here Today, which remains his most famous work. The title sums up the song rather completely, and one cannot help wondering if a true poet would bother picking up a pen to create an anthem to conciliation and lack of conflict. Some Mityayev fans might argue that the artist has come a long way in three decades. But a more recent song – heard regularly heard on the radio here – proves the point:

Summer is a tiny little life

On your own.

Leaves sprouting quietly

On your cheeks.

A house drifting through the summer

But without me.

Summer is a tiny little life.

Whatever one night say, this is far from the genre that Galich, Vysotsky, Kim, and Okudzhava worked in. It is telling that a cover version of this song was done bossa-nova style by the Russian pop group Uma2rman; in fact, Oleg Mityayev has long been closer to pop music than to author’s song. However, as he is a man with a guitar, the public calls him a bard – someone carrying on the great Russian poetic tradition. And in fact Mityayev is nearly the only singing poet whose enormous playbills are displayed throughout Moscow. He’s an ideal bard, completely suitable both to the public and to the authorities, so it is no surprise he celebrated his 50th birthday with concerts at the State Kremlin Palace. It is impossible to imagine Vysotsky, Galich, or Kim in a similar situation.

To be sure, Mityayev is not alone. His persona and art is merely the tip of an iceberg that is trying to take over what was once author’s song, and which keeps growing and has no plans whatsoever to thaw. Mityayev has become a key figure in the Songs of Our Century project, begun in 1999. In today’s Russia, the word “project” can mean anything. When speaking of a new film, a new exhibition, a new concert or festival, organizers refer to their brainchild repeatedly as a “project.” And perhaps its use is most appropriate here, since the subject is an enormous soap bubble utterly devoid of any authentic artistic content, something which provides nothing as a substitute for something.

The idea behind Songs of Our Century, like everything ingenious, is simple: gather up the public’s most beloved bard repertoire and perform it in a chorus. A distinguished chorus was assembled, including the performers Galina Khomchik, Konstantin Tarasov, Victor Berkovsky, Dmitry Bogdanov, and Aleksey Ivashenko. Nothing negative can be said about many of them. Take the late Berkovsky, who composed a series of wonderful songs, though they were written to other people’s lyrics. Or Aleksey Ivashenko, who for many years (with Georgy Vasiliyev) participated in the renowned duo Ivasi, which, though it never ascended to the heights of Galich, Vysotsky, and Kim, remained within the boundaries of the genre as something akin to the ballad.

The point is somewhat different. First of all, Songs of Our Century consists mostly of people who did not write their own songs. Bogdanov was Berkovsky’s partner for many years, Tarasov was Mityayev’s, and Galina Khomchik was praised in high circles for exclusively performing other people’s songs. Second, the collective sings the songs of various artists, including those who’ve left this world, in an impersonal, pseudo-heartfelt manner that makes no distinction between the styles of Okudzhava, Vizbor, Kim, Gorodnitsky, Klyachkin, or anyone else. Third, Songs of Our Century has eliminated the most important thing from author’s song — the author. Songs that were written for a specific individual’s performance style are instead performed by a friendly choir.

Thousands of people do the very same thing in their kitchens, dachas, and while traveling, but apparently it did not previously occur to anyone to put ordinary, friendly singing on an assembly line and contrive something like an ideological foundation for it. As the “project” organizers describe it: “We never sang together, though we each have hundreds of concerts under our belts. We’re very different people. We all write and sing in our own way. Every one of us has our own cares and complex personality. But nonetheless we came together as a chorus for Songs of Our Century and sang author’s songs that have become national treasures.”

The project’s ideologues are modestly silent about its goals and results. At its best, author’s song is intended to agitate, animate, and disturb. Yet the cozy version of Songs of Our Century sounds absolutely smooth, even, and calming. There is none of Kim’s irony, Galich’s sarcasm, Vysotsky’s anguish, or Okudzhava’s unrest. Songs of Our Century is allegedly a not-for-profit enterprise, but that’s hard to believe, judging by its numerous tours and dozens of CDs.

In essence, Songs of Our Century is just a continuation of Old Songs About Important Things, a project released for New Year’s 1995 by Leonid Parfyonov, in which the then-leaders of Russian stage performance performed cover versions of old Soviet songs. The project was done with irony, but that disappeared in its numerous sequels, and the public was given increasingly persistent opportunities to wax nostalgic about times gone by. In fact, Songs of Our Century sounds rather like a Soviet-style stage performance – you can hear the contrabass right along with the guitars. It’s no mystery that the classic bardic songs you hear on Russian radio are performed far more frequently by Songs of Our Century participants than by their authors. Things are just simpler, more comfortable, more peaceful that way.

The School of Contemporary Song

For all that is wrong with Songs of Our Century, in which classics of the genre are performed by professionals, there is yet an uglier corner of author’s song. Recalling the days when professional engineers, geologists, and teachers became bards, many today feel that bardic song by definition indicates a certain degree of dilettantism and non-professionalism. This leads to the birth of monstrosities like the popular group White Guard, which arose around Poltava journalist Zoya Yashenko. The group’s name comes from one of Yashenko’s early songs, whose refrain forms a direct answer to Alexander Galich’s tragic song When I Return, which was written after he’d been forced to emigrate:

When you come back,

All will have changed; I hope we know each other.

When you come back,

And I’m not a wife, or even a lover.

When you come back,

Will you come back to our Promised City?

When you come back,

The beloved I so long to see.

Next to Galich’s hopeless lines, which were written in despair, when he had no chance of returning to his homeland, these words seem sacrilegious. Judging by the fact that for half a decade this song has remained one of the most popular in White Guard’s repertoire, Zoya Yashenko doesn’t consider her answer to Galich shameful, especially since she feels ever more confidently his colleague.

Perhaps neither Songs of Our Century nor White Guard give a complete picture of the state of bardic song in Russia today. After all, there are plenty of clubs, societies (both on- and offline), gatherings, and festivals. The renowned Grushin Festival of author’s song has recently split into two (see Russian Life, July/August 2008). One of them now takes place a few kilometers from the other, and the members and leadership of the two festivals are clarifying their relationship in the press, on the Internet, and in court, disputing the rights to the name.

Yet this entire slice of life is truly real, alive, and developing only when it is not closed in on itself, when it evokes a response from the public at large. But the public has little interest in White Guard and in the problems of the Grushin Festival. People are occupied with surviving, and if they feel like hearing about their problems from someplace besides the television, they’ll probably turn on Vysotsky.

In point of fact, the Vysotsky phenomenon is amazingly enduring and relevant. They even cue him up periodically on Radio Chanson, the favorite station of taxi-drivers, which devotes 99% of its time to songs about prison by singers who’ve never seen the inside of one. It is just that the sensation is gone: Vysotsky is far from banned and is shown frequently on TV. The only exception seems to be every year around his birthday, when people try to squeeze him into a mold that fits the present day, and popular artists and singers gather in the television studio to sing his songs in the same spirit as Old Songs About Important Things. Apparently this is an inevitable chain of events, all the more so since Vysotsky himself foresaw it in his lyrics to Monument, where he imagines himself breaking out of his grave after hearing insipid versions of his songs being played in his honor.

It is bitter to recognize that the Soviet era, when creativity was suppressed on all fronts, was more productive for Russian music, prose, poetry, film, than have been the post-Soviet years, a time of supposedly greater freedom. It is not that art was directly connected with social protest during that period. It was more than that. It reflected suffering and the state of society.

Interestingly, we see this same phenomenon in Russian rock music. Though many new groups appear, the most popular continue to be those that arose during the 1970s era of stagnation and which achieved their greatest success in the years of perestroika – Kino, Akvarium, Nautilus Pompilius, DDT, and AlisA. Their songs are sung with more gusto at social gatherings than the songs of any groups that have appeared in the last 15 years.

So it is that the most popular bard “projects” perform songs from the giants of the past, with evenings dedicated to the memory of Vizbor, Vysotsky, and Okudzhava.

Stolen Air

Such programs are in fact possible without profiteering from someone’s legacy. The Moscow theater School of Contemporary Plays (Школа современной пьесы) holds an annual festival in honor of Bulat Okudzhava, where Yuly Kim, Alexander Gorodnitsky, Yury Shevchuk (frontman of the afore-mentioned DDT) and others gather to perform their songs in his memory. And if Okudzhava is sung, it’s done by master singers like Yelena Kamburova, who possess the talent to make any material their own. One of the festival’s regular participants is the bard Veronica Dolina, one of Russia’s most consistent and sincere composers and performers. In 30 years of work she has not definitively joined a particular group, has not betrayed her principles, and has firmly adhered to the path she chose. Dolina still actively writes and performs, and her opinion on the state of the genre therefore has particular significance. It is even more pessimistic than one might have supposed.

“The genre you’re asking about doesn’t exist, and it never did,” Dolina said. “What we’ve taken for a genre was a result of inebriation in the 1960s and 1970s. My words are backed by more than 30 years of work. What about Vysotsky, Galich, and Okudzhava? They were exceptions that existed despite the general trend, just like several of my peers and I myself. Illusions were sufficient for a couple of decades, that’s all. Sure, there are festivals, gatherings, and a lot of noise swirling around them, but there’s even more surrounding the Yurmala and Slavyansky Bazaar Festivals. The fact that the Grushin Festival has started breaking up only speaks to our poverty, of the latest battle for money and a piece of the governmental pie.”

“In the spring,” Dolina continued, “I sat on the jury of a large Moscow contest for young bards, and I didn’t hear anything there but an absolutely impenetrable graphomania. That was the opinion of the entire jury, and those sitting on it were all very different from one other. I’ve known all of them for a long time, but we no longer have a center to gather around. We see each other most often at funerals. Nobody has any use for what we’ve spent our whole lives doing. Vysotsky, thanks to his incredible artistic force and suffering, still sounds relevant. But I was horrified to notice the even Galich is becoming dated. The Russian language is changing and he speaks in yesterday’s language. Yuly Kim, thank God, is alive and writing – he does have a place within modern Russian speech. But our language today has become dulled, our thinking sluggish, and our standards have dropped. And the traditional prophetic role of the independent poet has been lost, abolished, annihilated.”

Dolina’s words in fact echo a recent song by Yuly Kim, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of Galich’s birth. That a poet of Kim’s stature continues to actively write and provide vivid responses to current events should mean that author’s voice is still alive. Yet his words seem to render a final verdict on the genre and on the society in which the role of the independent poet is expendable. Kim imagines a situation where Galich has been resurrected and visits Moscow for his 90th jubilee in 2008. Horrified by contemporary Moscow, Galich attempts to strike up a dialog with her:

- Well, hello, I said, Give a welcome!

It’s not like I’m not a total stranger.

- Oh my goodness, I’m all attention!

I just didn’t recognize you, my dear.

You should have called, we’d have met you.

Are you here on business or a lark?

- I have a ninetieth birthday to go to,

I’m still Galich after all.

- And how is [Comrade] – I mean, Madame Paramonova?

And the… what were they anyway, clouds?

What have you written lately?

- Well the well’s not dry so far.

I have a ballad about the new [gulag],

A cancan for the [secret police] retirees,

A couple little verses about Putin,

And a comedy called “[Mayor] Luzhkov will see you now.”

She said to me, “My sweet little bard,

Still digging up your country’s s—-.

Apparently even the grave

Can’t smooth the hump on a hunchback.

I would’ve let you perform, darling Alex,

But I don’t see any venues left.

Kasparov’s reserved every damn thing for disputing,

And Limonov and Ryzhkov for conventioning.

No welcome, no embrace, no warmth for you,

Ay, I’m so ashamed of myself!

But wait— come back when you’re 100

And I’ll meet you at the gates!

Not coincidentally, Galich is greeted by Moscow and not by the Kremlin. Kim isn’t speculating that a poet is inconvenient for those in power; that’s always been the case. Instead, it is that he is inconvenient for contemporary Russian society, and unneeded.

That such a verdict on bardic song was composed in the best of its traditions may be the most obvious indication of the genre’s irrelevance. RL

January 01, 2009

In Search of Bards

See Also

Vladimir Vysotsky Site

About Us

Latest Posts

Useful Links

Our Contacts