As a longtime Vysotsky lover I am deeply moved by seeing these Swedish musicians sining his greats songs translated in Swedish. Music is really a universal language :-)
The Saker
Saker Message:
As a longtime Vysotsky lover I am deeply moved by seeing these Swedish musicians sining his greats songs translated in Swedish. Music is really a universal language :-)
The Saker
Thank you Saker for posting this. Never heard it before. Music is a universal language indeed.
Here is ‘Midnight in Moscow’ from an album “Jazz in Russian” by Jan Johansson, one of the best jazz pianists Sweden has ever had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJICGZLYTZg&index=11&list=PLKUyqLlH6brnzROBxikSs-i9VdCVAG9Cl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Johansson_(jazz_musician)
Thanks for reminding me of Jan Johansson. He lived at a time when we watched an old Sovjet movie on TV every week or every month. They were very good and never political. What did that do to Jan and me and others? What did it do to the Russian children that read the children books of Astrid Lindgren? The Swedish children who saw the crocodile and his little friend (Stotakoy, moi drug)? There were many Russian songs on the radio and some of them were sung by children and teenagers in Swedish. Is the cultural exchange one of the reasons I am here? It is noteworthy there were closer cultural contacts during the cold war than today.
Jan combined jazz and Swedish folkmusic. He was the first jazz musician who caught my attention and he fascinated black American jazz musicians.
Sweden has changed a lot since those days of my youth and I’m afraid it’s not for the better. The Russophobia in the Swedish media today is relentless. Few Swedes realize that they are on the losing side of history. Yet like in every Country there are those who can see through the lies and spin. The same goes for Canada where I live now.
Hope you don’t mind another video featuring Jan Johansson. This one ‘live’ in Gothenburg 1961.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLl2ajfN03Q
Thanks, Jan and the other musicians are exceptional. How sad our young mostly never have heard of them. They don’t know some folksongs either. I was going to post a famous short Russian video clip from 1954, but it has been removed from youtube. It is a love scene in which a man sings for his woman as she departs in a steamship.
Swedish papers are almost unreadable and the russophobia is running wild. It comes from the top and from abroad, not the people, and it doesn’t penetrate me and some others. I remember Sweden as it was in another age, that is the advantage I have. That was also when we had responsible politicians like Vladimir Putin in Russia.
It is wonderful we start understanding each other better when we kick out politics and turn to culture. It is a powerful force.
Here comes a typical Swedish folksong. It is melancolic in a way I hope Russians will like. Jan put jazz in it.
Jan Johansson – Visa från Utanmyra (med kommentarer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKbCZnd8J6c
Sissel, the great Norwegian singer, gives her interpretation of the same folksong. In Swedish with English subs.
Sissel Kyrkjebø – Visa från Utanmyra (O tysta ensamhet)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPT5pvjkgL0
Thanks for posting.
Nordic classical music is related. Swedish, Finnish and Russian composers have their own special style and are somewhat similar.
One of the Vysotsky songs starts like a Swedish folksong, but the others are different. More Russian?
One of the videos has French subs, but they are nonsensical and belong to another video.
Swedish Bellman, who lived in the 18th century, wrote popular songs and was rediscovered in Kazakstan perhaps a decade ago. Kazakstan had Bellman feaver. He wrote songs for the people and is often heard on the radio in Sweden.
I have good reasons to think as Kris does in this video.
Kris Kristofferson From here to forever (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwL9SZA3HRw
The Rose of Novgorod in Finnish. Some jazz in it. Eila is almost forgotten and I want to change that.
Eila Pellinen – Novgorodin Ruusu (1961)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-uMKsmqeUg
A video about suffering women in a language some understand on this site. Very tragic. The group has some great videos on youtube.
Господи, прости нас!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0CqtwAiFZ8
In German. It is difficult to find the way home. Where is it?
Esther & Abi Ofarim – Mein Weg nachhaus (Wanderin’) אסתר ואבי עופרים
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pxFftcesGU&feature=related
Saker, thanks a lof for another Russian culture pearl! (meaning the original author V. Vysotsky) And this Swedish guy is also able to transfer the “spirit” of his songs. Beautiful example of cross-cultural humble human connection, despite all of the diabolical geopolitical moves, we are used to study & analyse here.
Wish to all quiet & pieceful morning coffee with a music background like this…
Rublev, Viktor Klimenko talks and sings in Russian, Swedish and Finnish. I am not sure but I think he has Karelian roots. He had a great career and was invited to many TV studios in the North, until one day he made a point of his Christian Faith. I often saw him on TV when I was younger. He was a successful cultural ambassador and sometimes sung in Russian in Sweden. Can you imagine we often heard him sing in Russian? Kalinka, Stenka Rasin, the boatmen on the Volga and other songs at a time when the whole people watched TV. He had an impact on all of us. TV was powerful.
Karelia is still an important cultural bridge. More so in the past, but you still meet people in Finnish Karelia who speak Russian and people on the Russian side who speak Finnish.
An old Finnish man told me his parents were trilingual, but spoke Russian at home. One of my neighbours when I was a child came from the Russian part of Karelia and she was multilingual (she spoke very good Swedish). If we want better understanding Karelia is a good place to start and I think Moscow and Helsinki know that. Culture and languages are the best tools.
One of my school mates had relatives in Stockholm, Helsinki and St. Petersburg since before the revolution and it was a common occurence. We had very good relations in the 19th century and one of the tzars visited Stockholm as a sign of the excellent relations. I think his name was Alexander. He was received like a cousin. Diplomatically and culturally life was good in the North.
I tell people my grandfather had a high winter hat like the ones seen in Russia and he had woven winter shoes in his youth like in Russia. The common people lived the same life in all the Nordic countries. He was young at the time of the revolution. My grandmother visited St. Petersburg during the cold war when she was old. She had dreamt of seeing the city for a long time and came back satisfied.
You may like this story. When my father was 15-16 years old he got in conflict with a teacher who admired the Third Reich. He stood up, he was strong, hit the teacher and lost his examina. He took a manual job and later came back, but it took him years. There are several stereotypes about Swedes and I hope this story kills one of them a little.
Viktor Klimenko Psalm 100 (Russian)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOZHkIt5XPo
Here is for you, if you want to study Viktor Klimenko, one of the best ambassadors Russian speakers have ever had in the North. Better than official ambassadors because culture touches the heart and the soul.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=viktor+klimenko+russian
You must be very proud of your father, well, even me myself I am, when being so young was able to do what was right.
I loved to know his story.
Russian culture has been always loved in the most remote locations, and even the most humble homes…
One of the few music tapes my father, a high waters sailor, has, was one of the Red Army Chorus, and so, as you, I grew up hearing songs like “Kalinka” “The Volga Boatmen” or “Black Eyes”…I have no idea, since he died when I was 15, from where that almost illiterate man who was my father got such likeness, I wonder if, perhaps, he could hear that music coming from a Russian ship in his long campaigns in Terranova…..but, anyway, despite being almost illiterate, obviously, he had his heart, his soul and sensitivity, which I recognize in myself. And, since he was also a very brave man, I know, for sure, from him, that sensitivity, even high sensitivity, is nothing wrong, and never opposite to or quarreled with courage….. Neither there is nothing wrong with being a manual worker….. I have known too many people with high university studies, and even some post grades, trying to give lessons to everybody in all divine and human, who did not know where they have their right hand in human terms and, on the contrary, very humble people, including those with whom I do my job everyday, who would surprise you in their understanding of the human nature, and their acceptance and respect for the other and its vulnerabilities, including, aging and lost of health.
So, all those people, not so few, who mocked and despised me throughout my life because of my sensitiveness, all what make me feel is pity, of their panic to feel something more than fear….
Dear Fatima, I wrote about my father. I have long known common people have more wisdom and faith than the elite and there is a special place in Heaven for hardworking manual workers who make things work.
The other day an African approached me and said blessing is coming in English. I instantly accepted his words. Why did he say that to a stranger? I see it as a spiritual thing and went home happy.
Your father taught you a lot. Do what you can as I have tried to do. What we never do will never be done, but what we do not know we can learn later. I think that is true for whatever religion we have. This is a place for doing things, not for being experts.
Do you want to know how a woman thinks? It is rather apparent in this video with Klimenko. I regret I was never given a marriage school. Now I am old and it is too late. Marion sings in French.
Marion Rung & Viktor Klimenko – Those were the days 1971
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4U7GYwutm8
So, why go over to the other side of the creek, when you have the real thing on YouTube:
Владимир Высоцкий – Кони привередливые
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0aWBGqTR4
Trubadurs is for shure good ambassadors. Cornelis Vreeswijk come with his parents from Netherlands at 12 years old, and come to be something of a national troubadour of modern Sweden:
Cornelis Vreeswijk – balladen om fredrik åkare och cecilia lind Live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReaRRY9yN_4
And here the Swedish National hymn in a different version by the Swedish nationalistic band Ultima Thule (this kind of music also goes under the name “Vikinga Rock” :
Du Gamla Du Fria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40ula7cdSFU
I am one of your countrymen. Cornelis made me learn to play the guitarr, something that
changed my life and the life of my children. I performed and sang in some European
countries and all my children learned to love music.
Around 1962-1963 I visited Cornelis in his small two room apartment in Bagarmossen,
Stockholm, to show off as a very young teenager thinking I was a star (which I wasn’t). He
listened politely and very patiently and then offered us beer. His wife came home with a baby
and Cornelis said they called the boy Laban until they found a better name. That means I met
Jack. A little later Skepparn Cervin arrived. He and Cornelis performed at Storken at Soder
Malarstrand in Stockholm. Fred Akerstroms first manager later told me the sad story about
Skepparn. He was depressed and sold his guitarr before killing himself. He also said he
secured 75 kronor for Freds first performance. Fred instantly converted the money into
alkohol, he said. I met Cornelis one more time, but we didn’t talk. Freds legacy is he
preserved Bellman for us and the world. Kazakstan has already been mentioned.
Thanks for making me remember Cornelis and for making me put this old testimony on the
net. This is an old thread but you at least will read my response.
As for Ultima Thule, the Sweden I grew up in is one of the reasons I understand present day
Russia. We had Christian korum every Sunday and were taught to shoot with Mauser at the
age of 14. My relatives kept the dream of Sorgarden alive and were always on the peoples
side. Love of country and love of the Lord as in Russia.