ArtistInfo

Vadim Astrakhan

voc, g, US
Singer

Vadim Astrakhan’s CD “Singer, Sailor, Soldier, Spirit” is the first stage of a unique project to reincarnate the encyclopedia of Soviet life Vladimir Vysotsky (1938-80) in the American cultural environment of the late 2000s-early 20010s. A famous Taganka Theatre actor, singer-songwriter, underappreciated poet, and inveterate boozer, Vyotsky was a legend and the quintessential Soviet macho model of the 1960s and 1970s. Whichever city you went to in the then Soviet Union, you would be certain to hear his hoarse, smoke-cured voice emanating from loudspeakers sitting on people’s window sills. He was a true People’s Artist of the USSR – the Bard of Russia. Vadim Astrakhan is an expert translator, Vysotsky fan, performer of his repertoire, and the leader of a major undertaking – to recreate Vysotsky’s legacy and spirit through translation and rearranged versions of his songs for new English-speaking audiences. Vysotsky’s performances were so authentic and convincing that his listeners were sure that he was now a Great Patriotic War veteran, now a former soldier, now a sailor, now a pilot, now a technically savvy explorer of Russian far-away areas. The contents of his songs ranged from themes of war to love to fairy tales, to sports to comic genre scenes, to hard-boiled criminal confessions. This first disk, containing 16 compositions performed by a group of talented musicians, is a poignant sampler of vintage Vysotsky. The project is a nexus of several knotty challenges: it is a major endeavor in translating culture in all senses of the word. The content has to be faithfully preserved while making linguostylistic and cultural adjustments to make it comprehensible to American audiences; the lyrics have to scan, i.e. have rhyme and rhythm; the consonants have to be sung – Vysotsky was the first performer to begin “singing consonants;” the level of self-involvement in and the self-sacrificial energy of performance have to be at the utmost point of human capacity – when the aortas start bursting; and the “shiver-down-the-spine effect” that many of Vysotsky’s songs evoke has to be matched. An uncannily tall order. And yet an order that in most instances gets fulfilled wonderfully by the larger than life performances of the Astrakhan collective. A tour de force. The selection on the CD covers several genres: dramatic, lyrical, comic, and philosophiclal. In the Airfight composition the Astrakhan team outdoes Vysotsky himself, producing a symphony of sound that gives the listener an eerie, sinking, life-is-slipping away sensation of the final stand to protect one’s honor, friend, and country. In the Submarine, one gets the uncanny feeling of gasping for breath together with the crew that is doomed but is about to surface and take out as much of the enemy shore installations as possible. In Everybody’s Gone to War, any ideological and personal differences between the prisoners and their guards stop making sense in the face of the bigger issue of defending one’s motherland. The Cab Meter lets us hear the interior monologue of the protagonist who is outwardly calm but is mulling over a deadly plan to take a horrible revenge on his rival in love. The theme of revenge is continued in The One Who was with her Before, which culminates in the protagonist stabbing his rival to death. In The Seven Years of Blue, the narrator has been betrayed by his girlfriend and after some unidentified crime is being taken in a freight car to Siberia to serve his prison term. He is praying to God that their paths do not cross again: the result would be lethal. Mona Lisa is a tongue-in-cheek meditation on the perennial battle of the sexes and the perfidious nature of women. Feminists should not take this story too seriously: it is told in 1969 in Russia, and Vysotsky is just being droll and ironic. Special mention should be made of the quality of the translations. Given the multifaceted challenges of poetic translation, complicated by having to preserve Russian/Soviet authenticity, the result is an incredible success. The lexical, stylistic, and pragmatic fits are very tight. And to those who might be inclined to nitpick, I can suggest a simple reality check: try to improve on the translations yourself.

Instruments

• Vocals
• Guitar

ArtistInfo App

Acknowledgements

ArtistInfo for Mac, iPad, and iPhone