Happy drummer

In Tbilisi, at the age of 85, the singer and actor Vakhtang Kikabidze, who for decades personified the friendship between Russia and Georgia, and then became the personification of their enmity, died.

Vakhtang Kikabidze’s father Konstantin Nikolaevich went missing at the front when Vakhtang Konstantinovich was only four years old, but his father seemed to always stand behind him – the artist recalled him in all interviews, and a fragment from the film “Mimino”, where the hero Yevgeny Leonov mistakenly takes Valiko Mizandari for the son of his deceased friend was an echo of the biography of Kikabidze himself.

Mother Kikabidze belonged to the noble family of Bagrationi and lived for 87 years – quite a common figure for Caucasian long-livers. She was a singer. At first, Vakhtang was not going to continue the family tradition, he received his higher education as a philologist, and appeared on stage as a drummer. “My mother once met her friend, whom she had not seen for many years,” Kikabidze said in an interview with Kommersant. “She asks:“ How are your children? A friend replies: “One son is the rector of the institute, the other is a physicist. And what does yours do?” And my mother blushed and lowered her eyes: “He is a drummer.”

In the 1960s, Vakhtang Kikabidze simultaneously sang in the Dielo quartet and drummed in the legendary Orera ensemble. It was a unique phenomenon on a global scale – folklore, jazz and pop music, intertwined in one musical space. If you look at the old videos of the ensemble on YouTube today, the impression is simply cosmic. Kikabidze the drummer had his own style and incredible performing temperament, and it was not for nothing that literally the next year after joining the team, he received the first prize as a drummer at a music competition at the Expo-67 exhibition in Canada.

In “Orer” Kikabidze worked with another legend – Nani Bregvadze. For decades, they remained the main Georgians and Georgians of the Soviet stage. In fact, it was they who set the standard for the all-Union audience for that very soulful, tart-sweet Georgian singing, which is able to melt the ice and penetrates the very soul. Kikabidze’s repertoire included real masterpieces like Georgy Movsesyan’s song to Robert Rozhdestvensky’s poems “My years are my wealth”, there were quite ordinary numbers, but the singer’s hoarse and at the same time melodically rich vocals made any of his concerts one big Georgian feast.

In the second half of the 1960s, Vakhtang Kikabidze began to actively act in films. Then the country learned his nickname – Buba. From the movie “Don’t Cry!” (1969) began the history of the most popular alliance of Soviet Georgian cinema – Vakhtang Kikabidze, Georgy Danelia and Gia Kancheli. “I consider the Kikabidze phenomenon in two planes,” composer Giya Kancheli told the author of these lines in 2016. “He is a very charming and soft singer with his own role and this is the hero of the films of Georgy Nikolayevich Danelia. These are two different Kikabidzes.”

If Kikabidze was given the main role, he did not miss the opportunity to sing, and the song immediately became a big hit.

But nothing can be compared with “Chito-gvrito” from “Mimino”. A helicopter with a cow hanging on a cable and the sound of drums from Chito-Gvrito is one of the images firmly glued into the Soviet collective unconscious.

The conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008 completely changed Kikabidze’s relationship with Russia, but not with the Russians. He never sang in Russia again and did not appear on Russian television, although he occasionally acted in Russian films. He systematically supported Mikheil Saakashvili and even became a politician himself – he was a member of the United National Movement party and entered the parliament. In December 2022, Kikabidze managed to visit Saakashvili in a military hospital in Gori. After 2014, the singer actively supported Ukraine in its confrontation with Russia.

In any interview, he made it clear in every possible way that in his understanding there is a difference between “scripts that are written in the Kremlin” and the Russian people with their culture.

“In my house all the children speak pure Russian,” Kikabidze insisted. “They read Pushkin, Turgenev, Lermontov. Cultures are very connected, these are two Orthodox countries. But if you wanted the Soviet Union, you shouldn’t have destroyed it. And now it’s too late, you can’t return the sausage for two-twenty.”

Vakhtang Kikabidze sincerely, with all his heart, hated the Soviet government and repeatedly talked about how at school he cleaned his shoes with a pioneer tie and how he set the festive table when the Union collapsed. However, it is hardly possible to imagine the phenomenon of Kikabidze outside the history of the USSR, as well as the phenomenon of Georgia itself in modern and recent times, in isolation from the long-term neighborhood with Russia.

A significant part of his life was spent in hospital wards, but at concerts he was the way the audience loved him.

“He is on dialysis three times a week. The only place where he comes to life is on the stage, in front of the audience that adores him,” said Giya Kancheli. “If you have the opportunity to meet and talk with him off stage, you are just a half-dead person.”

Nevertheless, at any concert and in any interview with Kikabidze there was a place for a good Georgian witticism or anecdote. “I had a very serious operation in Moscow, there was a tumor,” Vakhtang Konstantinovich told Kommersant. “I didn’t smoke for three months. On the third day after I left the hospital, my aunt, my mother’s sister, died. I loved her very much. When I found out, I started smoking again. Then there was the council. I went to the fourth floor to the doctors and thought: if they say that you can’t smoke, I’ll jump out the window to hell. They asked: “Have you been smoking for a long time?” – “From the age of nine.” – “Do not quit in any case.” And I, so happy, immediately lit two cigarettes and went.

Boris Barabanov