Biography of Nilda Fernandez published

The Infra-M publishing house published a book of memoirs by Olga Gerasimova-Fernandez “Nilda Fernandez: Slightly Above the Rules”, dedicated to her husband, French-Spanish chansonnier Nilda Fernandez. This book is a woman’s look at her lover and at the same time a European artist’s look at Russia, which he loved with all his heart and understood a lot about her. Memories read Igor Gavrilov.

Nilda Fernandez himself once wrote a book of memoirs. But this will not prevent the singer’s fans, and not only them, from absorbing with interest the stories that Olga Gerasimova has now recorded. In her book, you can follow how one of the most talented European songwriters comes to Russia, which has opened its doors to Western artists, how he discovers the country for himself, communicating with people in a variety of scenery, from the Kremlin to the Vykhino metro station .

The topic of expats who “sunk down” on Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s is worthy of many books. Crazy journalists like the publishers of the newspaper Exile fell in love with the country, as well as musicians who found here, like David Brown from Brazzaville, a new, grateful and sensitive audience. By the way, Nilda Fernandez is from Barcelona, ​​where the Californian Brown spends his life. At some subtle energy level, the city where there is no snow resonates with cold Russia.

Gerasimova begins the story of Nilda Fernandez with his collaboration with Boris Moiseev, which took shape shortly after Fernandez decided to get to know Russia better and came up with the French Seasons series of concerts. For Russia, Nilda Fernandez was both an educator who introduced the great chansonniers Georges Moustaki and Claude Nougaro to the local public, and part of the local pop community, which he entered thanks to duets with Boris Moiseev “Day and Night” and “When You Forget Me.” Fernandez, with his great passion for life in all its manifestations, was also interested in the opportunity to build new cultural bridges between Russia and France, and the chance to explore a vast country during endless tours.

This experience was invaluable. Olga Gerasimova writes: “When someone in France told Nilda about the “sharks of French show business”, he only brushed it off: “Have you ever seen negotiations in Russian? Now I will tell you the Prigozhin-Rousseau incident …” Loud the conflict between producer Iosif Prigozhin and singer Abraham Russo now worries only the latter’s devoted fans, and yet in the mid-2000s he was one of the most fertile topics of the yellow press.

He was able to fall in love with Russia without losing common sense and understanding all the quirkiness of its structure. When the French criticized her in his presence, he said: “Representatives of the country in which, excuse me, the emperor came to power after the French Revolution, need to be a little more modest in their categorical judgments.”

Even those who followed the work of Nilda Fernandez were not really familiar with his convictions and the curves of his biography, did not understand the scale of this figure. In fact, in the same period, he persuaded Zemfira (recognized as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation) to start a career in France (where fate eventually led her), and Jane Birkin to come on tour to Russia. The widow of Serge Gainsbourg refused, as she was one of the most violent opponents of the war in Chechnya, and Fernandez told her: “You cannot put an equal sign between the government and the people. For the sake of those who are waiting for you, for the sake of Serge and his memory, you must come to the homeland of his ancestors.

On the pages of the book “Slightly Above the Rules” there are many heroes of the Moscow gossip column of the 2000s, including those who now need to be mentioned with clarifying phrases about a foreign agency. At that time, they were building a new Moscow together with foreigners hanging in the Russian capital, who fell in love with it to such an extent that they themselves would not refuse the status of “Moscow agents”.

“In Moscow, morning coffee is he (Fernandez.— “b”) drank in “Pilot”, “Esterhazy” on Solyanka or in “Shokoladnitsa” on Oktyabrskaya. Appointed meetings in the lobby of the “Marriott” on “Mayakovskaya”, in the “Courvoisier” on “Sukharevskaya”, “White Sun of the Desert” or “Tiflis”. And for the soul, we went to “Mama Zoya” on the pier of Frunzenskaya Embankment, to the restaurants of Gorky Park and to two of our favorite restaurants on Nikolina Gora … ”Through the book of Gerasimova-Fernandez, you seem to fall into an era when there were no bike paths and MFCs in the capital yet, but there was already a feeling of the “center of the world”, which she was about to become. These flashbacks are no less valuable for A Little Above the Rules than stories about the adventures of a little Spaniard with a big heart.

Olga Gerasimova. Nilda Fernandez: Slightly above the rules. – M .: Infra-M, 2023.