Musical steamboat – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) dated 01/18/2023

The music collection “After Russia” was published, compiled by journalist Roman Liberov from songs to poems by poets of the first wave of Russian emigration. They were recorded by the leading independent musicians of Russia, most of whom left Russia. Album listened to Boris Barabanov.

The album of songs, named after the collection of poems by Marina Tsvetaeva during the emigration period, was released exactly two years after the tribute “Save my speech forever.” Then Roman Liberov handed out Osip Mandelstam’s poems to the musicians, and the response was deafening. The project was attended by both indie artists and big stars, such as Leonid Agutin. For the first time after Alla Pugacheva and her hits of the late 1970s “Once upon a time Alexander Gertsevich” and “Leningrad”, the authors of the tribute set Mandelstam’s poems to “light” music.

The album “After Russia” is rightly regarded as the final point on the centenary segment separating us from the “philosophical steamboat”. And of course, it is impossible not to look for a roll call between the fates of songwriters and authors of poems. Roman Liberov offered contemporary musicians the texts of poets whose talent flourished in exile and whose lives also ended in a foreign land. Hence their much less recognition even among devoted and erudite admirers of Russian poetry. Therefore, the project “After Russia” is not just a collection of songs posted on digital platforms, but also a full-fledged website – a guide to the fate of poets and hub centers of Russian emigration. Then it was Paris, Berlin, Istanbul. Now – Tbilisi, Riga, London.

There are no biographies of songwriters on the site. On the one hand, for the most part they are well known to everyone who follows independent Russian-language music. Here, Noize MC (performer Ivan Alekseev is included by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the list of foreign agents), Monetochka, “Samsara”, “The leg has cramped!”, “Porn films”, Tequilajazzz. On the other hand, new chapters of these biographies are being written right now. Most of the songwriters left the country after the beginning of the NWO, and it is unlikely that they will be playing in their homeland anytime soon.

Perhaps the only one of the massively popular artists who was noted on the album “After Russia” and at the same time continues to tour the country is the Naiv group. They set the poem “Machine Gun” by Vadim Andreev (the son of the writer Leonid Andreev) to music. Polished in the studio punk-rock “Naiva” is perfectly combined with the text-foresight. Perhaps not all connoisseurs of belles-lettres will agree with Andreev’s epithet “intelligent” when applied to a machine gun, but the premonition of civil war embedded in the text will surely resonate with many listeners.

Of course, you should not abuse the parallels. These first-wave immigrants in exile were forced to work as taxi drivers, projectionists and coffee sellers; Most of the musicians who left Russia in 2022 work by profession, some even arrange entire concert tours. But there are those who repeat the fate of the emigrants of the beginning of the last century almost literally. For example, the Yekaterinburg actor, poet and rapper Naum Blik works in one of the Parisian Burger Kings, which does not prevent him from continuing to write poetry. The album contains his song “In a Dream”, which is written to the verses of Vadim Andreev and Yuri Mandelstam, the namesake of the great poet, who also once lived in Paris and died in Auschwitz.

Shym, a member of the classic Russian rap group Kasta, begins his track “A Man Begins with Grief” to the verses of Alexei Eisner with melodeclamation in the style of a school drama club and only then taxis to the usual powerful Rostov reading. The group “Pornofilmy” also surprises. The track “I won’t die” to the verses of Dovid Knut sounds like a White Guard romance, which is easy to imagine performed by Alexander Malinin. But very soon a fuzzy guitar appears, and the romance eventually turns into blues.

The authors of the tracks demonstrate not only an understanding of the original poetic material, but also an excellent musical form. “Shooting” Monetochki to the verses of Vladimir Nabokov, “From Afar” by RSAC to the verses of Georgy Raevsky, “Flags” by Boris Poplavsky, performed by the inimitable voice of Evgeny Fedorov from Tequilajazzz, unexpected Russian melody of “Parnassus” by Sergei Bongart, recorded by Noize MC – all this material, which may well live in playlists out of historical context.

Perhaps the central track of the album is “The Leaving Shore” to the verses of the Don Cossack and Parisian emigrant Nikolai Turoverov. The cinematic analogue of the song is the final fragment of the film “Two Comrades Were Serving”, in which the hero of Vladimir Vysotsky, fleeing from the Crimea in 1920, parted with his own horse. Surely many have heard this text performed by Nikita Mikhalkov and Nikolai Rastorguev – under the name “My Horse” he sounded on the album “Lyube” “Rassey”. The authors of the current version, Misha Dymov and Mila Varavina, are probably the least known members of the tribute to the general public. The song, however, turned out to be touching and much more authentic than that of the Russian president’s favorite band.