Last Concert

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Pat Lang

Russianbear

I prefer "Katyusha." 

https://youtu.be/ae833ktGAdA

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Katyusha+Song+YouTube&&view=detail&mid=A2A32559D8A0CC58E61EA2A32559D8A0CC58E61E&FORM=VRDGAR

pl

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29 Responses to Last Concert

  1. ToivoS says:
    December 27, 2016 at 2:45 am

    What a great tribute.

  2. jld says:
    December 27, 2016 at 4:31 am

    Definitely a “Putin bot” Colonel!
    😀

  3. Jov says:
    December 27, 2016 at 5:23 am

    May their souls rest in peace.
    I can’t find on youtube the Alexandrov Ensemble singing my favourite ”Ljubo, bratci ljubo…” so I’ll post this song as sang by Pelagea, a Russian singer with a divine voice.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vSjrAsn1Io
    and another with subtitles in English (but another singer)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gg6AflKiw

  4. turcopolier says:
    December 27, 2016 at 8:02 am

    jld
    A “Putin bot?” You mean the bear? IMO the bear is really a Sasquatch in a bear suit. pl

  5. mike allen says:
    December 27, 2016 at 10:26 am

    Russia’s Jackie Evancho, Valeria Kurnushkina, sang a dynamite performance of Katushha along with the Red Army Choir back a few years ago.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCleIHK2lU

  6. Pundita says:
    December 27, 2016 at 12:19 pm

    Speaking of song, I stumbled across a rendering of an old Iranian love song by the Iranian Balochi singer Rostam Mirlashari (“the prince of Balochi music”) that melds eastern and western musical styles and instruments including Irish fiddling(!) and somehow comes out perfect.
    “Laila O Laila”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwJynFW64U
    Click on the “CC” (subtitles/closed captions) button on the YouTube screen for the English translation of the charmingly old-fashioned lyrics. (“The parting of your hair is so clear and exquisite that my heart just melts to see it”)
    Mirlashari’s 2013 performance was for the Coke Studio Pakistan television series (yes, Coca-Cola), which has been facilitating an incredibly syncretic musical revolution that’s very much on display in “Laila O Laila.”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostam_Mirlashari
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_Studio_(Pakistan)

  7. FourthAndLong says:
    December 27, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    Two of my favorites:
    March of Stalin’s Artillery
    https://youtu.be/ADcQKDjb0_o
    Farewell to Slavianka
    https://youtu.be/mwAGw92RHQc
    Traditionally the second piece is played at the end of the Victory Day march in May on Red Square.

  8. FourthAndLong says:
    December 27, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    Can’t leave off without including these;
    Zhuravli, performed by Serebro
    https://youtu.be/x8B3KKy0fQE
    The Cliff, performed by Leonid Kharitonov and The Red Army Choir
    https://youtu.be/0q2ijYcbuxc

  9. Clonal Antibody says:
    December 27, 2016 at 4:38 pm

    Colonel, This is slightly off-topic, but relevant to the way US engagements have been going since 2001. I wonder if you had come across the The Drone Papers and if so, what were your thoughts on those.

  11. Ishmael Zechariah says:
    December 27, 2016 at 4:47 pm

    4th&long,
    The original “Farewell to Slavianka” is a White Russian Song.
    Ishmael Zechariah

  12. aleksandar says:
    December 27, 2016 at 7:37 pm

    This one is mine
    Red Army Choir – A Partisan’s song
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LydK6FZTpPc

  13. Clonal Antibody says:
    December 27, 2016 at 8:21 pm

    Red Army Choir
    The Red Army Choir MVD – FlashMob (Moscow Metro)
    https://youtu.be/XoPzzAkGyLg

  14. FourthAndLong says:
    December 27, 2016 at 10:33 pm

    According to Wikipedia Kolchak indeed did make use of ‘Farewell of Slavianka’, but its origins were in the first Balkan War — not even a Russian war per se, though many volunteered to fight against the Ottomans.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_of_Slavianka

  15. Dubhaltach says:
    December 28, 2016 at 5:52 am

    Juravli performed by St. Petersburg Boys Choir:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOz8H_RTevI
    Chesnokov Op. 24-6 – “Let My Prayer Arise” (Psalm 141) “Ark” choir of Cathedral of the Redeemer.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvHAqjODCcI

  16. Kerim says:
    December 28, 2016 at 12:51 pm

    Same for me

  17. Chris Chuba says:
    December 28, 2016 at 3:40 pm

    I’ll add, “The Sacred War” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7JoOP3j83U
    This was written in 1941 for obvious reasons. I found a rendition with english subtitles. It is very effective. I hunted it down after watching an Oliver North ‘War Stories’ episode.
    If only the Germans knew what they were getting themselves into. They really thought that they would crush the Red Army on the border, mop them up in 8 weeks, and then drive into Moscow in a Mercedes and dictate terms. The Russians (and republics) were just getting warmed up. They were still calling up active reserves in the first 3 months.
    Regarding “Laila O Laila. Rostam Mirlashari”, I find it striking how Indian that sounds to me, I don’t have exposure to Iranian music so either it is similar to Indian music or my ear is not trained to know the difference.

  18. Lev says:
    December 29, 2016 at 5:07 am

    Though nearly forgotten in the West, “Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer” is still going strong in Russia. There are many versions, in many styles. Here are two of them, cleverly segued together. Enjoy.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKowJbO0EE

  19. Babak Makkinejad says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:23 am

    They are being (Northern) Indian-ized; both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
    This is more typical of popular music of Iran:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y8jbowd1ZE
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5rsGfE3v_M&list=RD0y8jbowd1ZE&index=17
    Good for parties…

  20. Paul Escobar says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:23 am

    Chris Chuba,
    There is a significant middle-eastern influence on India’s language & culture.
    When Indians converse in Hindi, you will occasionally hear Arabic phrases & words interspersed. This is especially true in the sphere of religious conversation.
    The influence is most obvious in popular Indian music. The Balochi song you cited, Laila O Laila, may sound “Indian” to you because evokes the “Qawwali” style of the popular South Asian singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
    Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was Pakistani by nationality, but his music was widely popular in India & appeared in countless Bollywood films.
    Additionally, one of the great contemporary Indian musical composers, AR Rahman, has been personally influenced by Suffism. Consequently, he has done much to popularize that sound in the broader Indian culture.
    Best,
    Paul

  21. Babak Makkinejad says:
    December 29, 2016 at 12:47 pm

    That was the legacy of Mughals, they were enamored of the Persian Culture. There are many Indian poets who wrote thousands of lines of excellent Persian poetry who lived and died in India – speaking not Persian. Even today, in Punjab among the Sikhs, you can hear vestiges of that admiration for all things Persian; such as her cuisine.
    When Iranians went into a prolonged state of what could only charitably be called slumber, their influence in the Sub-continent waned. I expect, for example, that Pashtuns will become indistinguishable from Punjabis in Pakistan.
    The music is a good indicator of the extend to which Iranians’ orientation – like that of Turks – is towards Europe and Pakistan’s and India’s inward. The Seljuk Lands are busy experimenting with foreign things and adopting them when they fit, while Arabs, Pakistanis, and Indians are largely inward bound – in my opinion.

  22. Paul Escobar says:
    December 29, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Babak,
    The Indians have been (and continue) doing the “experimenting, adopting, discarding” thing you describe in regards to Turkey.
    I actually find the Turks & Indians to be very similar. They went through similar westernization processes under both Ataturk & Nehru. From which the neo-liberal & religious movements arose (and somewhat merged) in opposition.
    In the end, the same irony will play out in both nations. They are coming to realize the dangers & limits of their reactionary fetishes. In their own ways, they will return to the sensible aspects of their pasts.
    I believe a certain world leader has helped them in this process. But that is a discussion for another day.
    Best,
    Paul

  23. Norbert M Salamon says:
    December 29, 2016 at 3:50 pm

    an excellent version with English subtitles:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7avPl6jB5w
    I love it

  24. FourthAndLong says:
    December 29, 2016 at 4:24 pm

    Thank you. I remember that version fondly.

  25. FourthAndLong says:
    December 29, 2016 at 4:26 pm

    Yes. ‘The Sacred War’ is beyond awesome. 1941. Didn’t take them much time.

  26. Tidewater says:
    December 29, 2016 at 6:06 pm

    Tidewater to All,
    The Cossack will not speak on this matter. Perhaps we will never talk about it. What I remember about the The Red Army Choir back in the late fifties was that from the moment I first heard them I began to think more critically and respectfully about Russia. They were true ambassadors! I remember that years later, after we were out in the world, my late brother, who was in real estate, on a couple of occasions was involved in what I would consider big, scary deals (with partners), and when caught up in difficulties with the project, would put on the Red Army choir and sit drinking whisky through an evening listening to the record (come to think of it he had a little collection of different albums!) over and over again, for a very long time. Lost in solemn concentration. Then he would put on a different group, say the band of the Preobrazensky guards regiment (whose anthem Mountbatten ripped off for the Household Division to walk off to after the Trooping of the Color) and fix another drink. Was it Rebel Yell? (I had changed over to Scotch by then for health reasons after I learned that Lyndon Johnson recommended it.)
    I once inquired of the Cossack what she thought about the music of Eric Satie, was it not charming and playful? She blew up, as she sometimes tends to, though there is no bite in her bark. She rapidly listed a number of classic composers that I believe she learned to play, to the point of routine daily exhaustion, at the Kiev Conservatory as a young girl, most of them German, incidentally. She makes me understand the word “Diva.” Satie was complete frivolity, and was dismissed with contempt. She was a serious person, and I should remember that! (This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like France, or that, by the way, that there are not a remarkable amount of French words absorbed into the Russian language. She doesn’t like Matisse either.) I think that there was a rigor to her Russian education that to an American is beyond belief. (A Teutonic rigor? Or must piano study always be Teutonic rigor?) She has also tutored at UVA in Russian and once told me with some satisfaction that after he used some extremely awkward grammatical constructions, her rebuke of an old American UVA professor made the man cry.
    This does not mean that she doesn’t understand playfulness in music. This brings me to the Russian “Happy Birthday” song. Russians do indeed have a “Happy Birthday” song that seems to me to be almost exactly like the American. However, it seems to me that that one (the plodding, embarrassing one) is not the birthday song that Russians love, nor is it an ancient one. The old birthday song that was sung to the Tsar is one that is not much known anymore but which she has sung for me. There is a growing hilarity contained within this song. I see it sung in a great St. Basil Cathedral, or such, with massed choirs of all ages. I have the words beside me, but my cats are sitting on top of them and I don’t want to bother them. There are only two words. They are wishing the Tsar a long life. The words are “Long Time.” I see the older, male choir singing this greeting ,at the end of a birthday celebration, with deep solemnity. Then the younger choirs, surely with many children, also give the greeting “Long Time” more shrilly, but equally formal. Then after a tiny little pause, I assume, they start in, now repeating themselves, but dragging out the words. “Lonng timme” and then, again repeating, they drag them out even more; “Lonnng timmme” –and because, after all, what they are singing is supposed to be about a long time, so why not carry on a bit? So they do carry on, taking it a few more times right over the top. By the end, people, including the Tzar and his family, must all have been giggling or even laughing out loud as the massed choirs finally bring it thunderously, to its crazy, hilarious, joyously giddy conclusion: “LONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG TIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMME!” It is very touching and very funny.
    But the current most-loved Russian happy birthday song came from a television cartoon of the 1960’s. I once looked it up on Youtube and did not understand it at all, though the song itself was remarkable. The song is called “The Cheburashka Song” and is played by a television cartoon character of the 1960’s, Gena the Crocadile. The cartoon, which seems dated in its style of drawing back to the thirties, shows the little milk truck arriving in an appropriately dreary winter Russian town square toy setting. (Though Cherkassy has a climate not unlike Charlottesville.) The milkman, who is in a heavy looking gray uniform, finds Gena the Crocadile standing there alone out on the street, at dawn in this cold, wet weather, playing his song on an accordion. As the King of Siam said, “Is a puzzlement.” Though, of course, crocadiles do seem to be inscrutable. The song seems to me to to have all kinds of little hints of complicated emotional things. Do I hear, again, a little teasing, a little irony; do I hear something…Russian?
    Finally, I looked up the translation. When I asked the Cossack about the words, she very sharply stated that there is nothing “sad” about the song. An American translation used the word “sad.” No, no, no.
    My very rough translation is (from the English):
    “Just because the people walking down the street
    Are hopping over mud puddles,
    Well Never Mind.
    And if they can’t understand why I’m such a happy guy (girl),
    Standing out here on such a lousy day,
    Well Never Mind.
    Just a’playing my accordion
    In front of everybody walking down the street,
    And the only thing that really does kinda make me wonder —
    Why is it you only get a birthday
    Just one time a year?”
    After that the wonderful things that are soon to happen are sung. There are many versions. A wizard will suddenly appear in a blue whirly-bird…Bringing five hundred ice cream cones…
    And it ends, repeating: “Yes, I’m playing my accordion, standing out here on the street, and why, why is it, that birthdays are just one time a year?”
    Youtube has a number of somewhat drab colored versions of this original and famous cartoon birthday song, “Cheburashka.” And there are more recent versions of this song in black and white done by the highly professional children choirs of the old Soviet Union. (Again, on Youtube.) But nice to have had it sung to me in Russian over the telephone once again last night even if wasn’t my birthday.

  27. Tidewater says:
    December 29, 2016 at 10:33 pm

    Tidewater to Tidewater,
    In the interest of accuracy, then. I double-checked for an English translation after posting the above. To my surprise I found “Cheburashka’s Birthday Song ^_^ (English/Yakut)” on YouTube. This by a young woman identified as Umira2. Is she the ethnic equivalent of the Swedish and Norwegian Sami? She has translated “Cheburashka” first into English and then she follows that rendition with her translation into Yakut.
    Yakut? And that is…Siberia?
    Interesting how she deals with the difficulties of translation and the lack of the Russian rhyme in the English. There are also other songs sung by her, Yakut songs. I happen to like blue-stockings. She must have gone to St. Margaret’s College, Oxford, speaks a very clear, very precise English, and has a beautiful light voice. So is this — Siberian woman? Is this what the survivors will find when they reach the north? Well, then, Northward ho!
    Another thing. The man in the truck in the cartoon is in a brown uniform with trim; he is not a milk-man, but some sort of general deliveryman, even a postman? What is written on the side of the truck is some sort of joke, probably. The Cossack said that adult humor is built into Russian children’s cartoons. And the crocadile Gena is easily perceived to be in a gentle and happy mood.
    Why did I jump so quickly to milkman? I have been back deep again into “Classic Crimes” by William Roughead. This is primal Scottish ur-stuff. Roughead comments in THE SANDYFORD MYSTERY about Glasgow: “The Second City, in mid-Victorian times, was singularly rich in wrongdoers of the most attractive type…” Who provided, as in this instance, “a first-class case, bristling with sensation and strange surprises, possessing everything requisite to a great criminal drama and constituting in my submission, an ideal murder.”
    You see, the important thing is that the authorities did not at first learn what the milkman knew, and he gave a very precise time. He said that the door was opened only a crack, and he could not see inside. But he was told by a woman’s voice in what was, I assume, broad Scots dialect (hmmmm), that no milk was needed that morning. And that was not only unusual, it had never happened before! The case reminds me a little of Eisenhower’s remark, that if you have a problem and you cannot seem to solve it, then expand the problem. (Now, Tidewater, admit, that was a bit cold.) But while we’re at it, one last thing about this fucking birthday song, and then I’m done with it, that Russian deliveryman takes something in his arms and delivers it to the first dwelling he comes to. Odd. What was it? Was that little Cheburashka? I think I’ll never know. Time to open the Whole Foods Christmas Malbec and look deep into the Siberian soul.
    Have I lived? Truly lived. Have I? Isn’t it time to just let it all hang out?

  28. walter says:
    December 29, 2016 at 11:57 pm

    Thank you for posting this beautiful concert. What a terrible loss. I first bought their albums in the 1960s have enjoyed their music ever since. They have a unique vocal quality that conveys both the majesty and mystery of Russian culture.
    For a glimpse of the bizarre, here they are performing “Delilah” with the Leningrad Cowboys.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhIMEMDYxZE

  29. Tidewater says:
    December 30, 2016 at 3:01 pm

    Tidewater to Tidewater,
    FWIW it is LMH, Lady Margaret Hall. And in the cold light of day…conclusions sound, credit where credit is due.

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