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Be cool, dress cool, think cool, play cool. If you are into Blatnyak, the music of the Russian criminal class, you have to act accordingly. Present day Blatnyak artists take it very literally: they wear golden chains, and golden rings, have golden teeth and fake a criminal record. Petersburg based band La Minor decided not to take it literally but to bring it to a higher, artistic level. They want to reproduce the criminal songs as they sounded in the streets of port town Odessa in the twenties and thirties, from where the genre originates. The songs deal with the lives of criminals, their codes, with alcohol, drugs, prostitution, with life in prison and camps. They tell stories without hope in a funny and cheerful way: the Odessa way. This song is a real classic: Girl in a White Cotton Dress.

 

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For seventy years the communist world had to live without Christmas. Lessons in leadership demand since Roman times bread and circuses for the people, so Soviet leaders thought: let’s give the people a Christmas tree on New Year’s Eve. I wouldn’t say it is devoid of logic. And not only do Russians have their Christmas tree on New Year’s Eve, since 1975 they also can enjoy a very charming television film called Enjoy Your Bath!. It is annually broadcasted nationwide in millions and millions of Russian living rooms. The story is about 34 year old Zhenya who is going to spend his New Years Eve with his fiancée. But while having a traditional bath together with friends in a public bathing house in the afternoon he gets drunk. By a strange sequence of occurrences Zhenya ends up in exactly the same neighborhood, in exactly the same apartment building in exactly the same street, in exactly the same apartment as his own, but in Leningrad in stead of his hometown Moscow. Confusion, complications, new unexpected developments. It is nice melodrama with a touch of melancholy.

The film is also liked for its poetical music. The songs were dubbed by Sergei Nikitin and Alla Pugacheva, a famous pop diva without equals in Russia. In this clip - not from the film - we see a young and stout Alla Pugacheva performing a song from the film: Mne nravitsya … (I Like…). For the last three decades she has been a central figure in the Russian pop scene and in the tabloids. I won’t expand on her turbulent life, nor on her popularity. I will just give the statistics. See the graphic below.

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When you ask Balkan people where you can find the Balkan soul, Balkan people will answer: kafana. Kafana means something like café, but it’s not merely a place to drink and socialize. It is a way of life. The word is Turkish - well, when you start explaining Balkan soul, you need Turkish words. There is no sense in trying to explain kafana culture here. Better watch this clip from Aleksandar Petrovic’ film Skupljaci Perja (’Feather Gatherers’), also known as I Even Met Happy Gypsies, in 1967 awarded with the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. It is a powerful and cruel scene, not meant for the younger or weak hearted visitors of this site, and it doesn’t explain anything. It only shows.

The film is about the moral codes of Roma life in the Serbian province Vojvodina. Main actor is the Yugoslavian Alain Delon from Albanian descent called Bekim Fehmiu. Topsinger and actress Olivera Katarina is singing the Gypsy classic Delem Delem. Subtitles are in Serbocroatian.

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All information I gathered about this clip is very unreliable. It is a scene from Azerbaijan film O Qizi Tapin (Baku Studios, 1970). It means ‘Find That Girl’ and is supposed to be a detective. Someone told me that the guy on the guitar is Polad Bülbüloglu, but I very much doubt that since I cannot find his name between the credits. Polad Bülbüloglu used to be a famous Soviet actor and singer, who played in many films, composed several scores and also was a crossover musician avant la lettre, who adapted traditional Azerbaijan music to a popular electrified style. Rumor has it that he was caught for smuggling valuta (dollars!) into the USSR and was imprisoned for 7 years, but this is also unconfirmed. After Azerbaijan’s independence he became first a MP. By the end of the nineties he was ambassador in Moscow. Then he became Azerbaijan’s minister of culture. This sounds all very exciting and I like to know more about it. But since most info is in Azerbaijani, I really cannot check what is true and what is false. All new info on the guy playing the guitar, the girl washing her feet in the bay and on Polad Bülbüloglu is welcomed.

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These pretty faces are labukhi, musicians who play you songs on marketplaces, in bars or at weddings for some small amount of money in exchange. The Soviet version of troubadours. They are specialized in blatnye pesni, criminal songs. They enjoyed huge recognition in the entire Soviet Union, but on an underground level, especially in the Caucasus and Transcaucasian republics. On the very left Baku born Armenian Boris Davidyan aka Boka, the most popular of Caucasus’ labukhi. Presently he is living in the US, still performing in places like Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Rostov, Makhachkala. His most famous song: Dolya Vorovskaya (Thieves’ Fate).

No clip this time, only a song. Click play and listen to Okurochek (fag) a criminal song about a camp prisoner risking his life for a fag, as performed by French Russian singer Dina Verni.

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Blogging is a highly individualistic enterprise. To make up for this I post a clip on the merits of collectivism. Soviet life was not all misery, darkness and terror. Communism also had its share of entertainment. And rightly so: why shouldn’t toiling masses dance and listen to music? Since all Soviet workers in a recent past were peasants dancing folk dances in the woods, singing harvest songs in the fields, much of popular culture is drenched in folklore. A lot of footage from Soviet times is now available on the Internet and we capitalists are able to see for ourselves that life in the USSR could be very entertaining indeed!

This is a clip of the etno hardcore band Zdob si Zdub from the former Soviet state Moldova, poorest of all European countries. It is an enlightening parody on Soviet popular culture, with elements of collective farming, model factories and un-hip celebrities with heavy-rimmed glasses.

The name of the song is Buna Dinimeata - Good Morning!

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How do you like your Gypsy music served – saignant, à point or bien cuit? I have it with sugar and a little cream on top. Sometimes it is just too raw for me to swallow. Bucharest proved to be a very soothing cradle for Roma style gypsy music. The inhabitants of Romania’s enigmatic capital managed to survive plenty of troubled times, mainly with three powerful weapons: elegance, charm and seductiveness. For their part the Bucharest lautari – Roma musicians – had to bewitch their fellow townsmen with the same armory.Legendary Roma singer Romica Puceanu died in 1996 in a car accident - seventy years old - on her way home from a wedding gig. She was one of the eminent voices of her time. Although she came straight from the mahalas - the poverty stricken outskirts of Bucharest - we see her play here not in a bar or in a muddy street, but in some fancy, old-style club. No shouting, no dancing on tables, no drinking. Just confetti all over the place. We also hear a bit of whistling: it’s a playful sight, not a rough game. The atmosphere is for Gypsy standards rather laid-back. Which makes it all the more exciting.

The song is called Aş munci la plug şi coasă - I would work with plow and hoe.

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The Friendship of the Peoples: Stalin may have invented it, Rashid Behbudov embodied it. The Azerbaijani singer and actor was hailed within and outside the USSR. He was born in Tiblisi two years before the October Revolution and died in a Moscow hospital two years before the end of the Soviet Union. He didn’t know a world without Soviet power. His career very much benefited from the system, and the system benefited from him, since he was a living example that the Soviet Union brought good to all nationals. But a man with his talent would have made it anywhere. He traveled the world without any restrictions. He was very popular in Iran and India. Even Soviet leaders considered it a waste for a man with such an exceptional and sweet voice to sing songs in praise of the Soviet Union. So they let him sing love songs in whatever language.

Notwithstanding his cosmopolitanism, he was an Azerbaijani artist. The source from which he drank was the rich musical tradition of his native people. He played many fine versions of Azerbaijani standards. Enjoy the song Agacda alma.