Great Bulat Okudzhava (1924 - 1997)
Bulat Okudjava was born in 1924 in Moscow. Graduated the Tbilisi (Georgia) State University Philological Department in 1950. One of the founders of the Russian artist's song genre. Wrote his first well known song in 1946. Bulat Okudzhava died on June 12, 1997 in Paris. He renowned Russian poet-bard, has written four historical novels since the 1960s: Bednyi Avrosimov (1969), Pokhozhdeniia Shipova (1971), Puteshestvie diletantov (1977), and Svidanie s Bonapartom (1983). All four novels in their historical settings allegorically reflect the tense political climate of the Soviet Union, specifically in terms of the liberal intelligentsia. The first two novels, Bednyi Avrosimov and Pokhozhdeniia Shipova, are of particular interest when examined together. What makes the novels especially interesting, and the interpretation of a political allegory of the tense climate of the Soviet Union of the 1960s so fruitful, is this filtration of historic subjects through phantasmagoric imagery.
In 1941, at the age of 17, he volunteered for the Red Army as infantry. This background with war and the government persecution was a primary influence for his poetry and songs, especially at this early stage. Such poetry was illegal at the time, and Okudjava was at great risk of persecution.
Okudjava started the bard movement when he decided to start singing his poems while playing the guitar. Despite the fact that he only knew a few chords and was no composer, his songs were praised by his friends and were soon recorded. They spread across the country where other young people picked up guitars and started singing them.
He once said:"' Once I had the desire to accompany one of my satirical verses with music. I only knew three cords, now, 27 years later , I know seven cords, then I knew three. I sang, my friends liked it, and I liked it. Then I sang a second poem and a third... Tape recorders have just come out then. I sang to my friends, and recorded it , then someone else made a copy of that recording, it started going around... Every evening I would get a call from someone inviting me to a house I've never visited before, and that is how I went around Moscow for a year, singing. Gradually a scandal began. The compositors hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me. And that is how it went on, until a very well known poet of ours announced: "Calm down, these are not songs. This is just another way of presenting poetry." And everyone has indeed calmed down. Everyone went about their own business... Eventually I matured, eventually I grew old... Why don't I just sing you a song - that first one... Just for keepsake...You'll remember it later..."Why did you bother Vanka Morozov? It wasn't his fault..."
In the later years journalists have asked Okudzhava, as if he were a prophet: "Say, what is the meaning of life? " But he simply did not talk about it."
You can hear a lot of his songs at our Libra Radio.
35 translated songs
lyrics in Russian
lyrics in text format with chords
Russian lyrics and English translations
His father, a high Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested during the Great Purge by Stalin and executed as a German spy. His mother spent 18 years in a Gulag (1937-1955), years that Bulat spent at his grandmother's house.
Okudjava started the bard movement when he decided to start singing his poems while playing the guitar. Despite the fact that he only knew a few chords and was no composer, his songs were praised by his friends and were soon recorded. They spread across the country where other young people picked up guitars and started singing them.
He once said:"' Once I had the desire to accompany one of my satirical verses with music. I only knew three cords, now, 27 years later , I know seven cords, then I knew three. I sang, my friends liked it, and I liked it. Then I sang a second poem and a third... Tape recorders have just come out then. I sang to my friends, and recorded it , then someone else made a copy of that recording, it started going around... Every evening I would get a call from someone inviting me to a house I've never visited before, and that is how I went around Moscow for a year, singing. Gradually a scandal began. The compositors hated me. The singers detested me. The guitarists were terrified by me. And that is how it went on, until a very well known poet of ours announced: "Calm down, these are not songs. This is just another way of presenting poetry." And everyone has indeed calmed down. Everyone went about their own business... Eventually I matured, eventually I grew old... Why don't I just sing you a song - that first one... Just for keepsake...You'll remember it later..."Why did you bother Vanka Morozov? It wasn't his fault..."
In the later years journalists have asked Okudzhava, as if he were a prophet: "Say, what is the meaning of life? " But he simply did not talk about it."
You can hear a lot of his songs at our Libra Radio.
35 translated songs
lyrics in Russian
lyrics in text format with chords
Russian lyrics and English translations
posted by O.marian at 21:15
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