Today is 7th of March is a happy festival of Purim and I am releasing Hava Nagila a very famous Jewish tune. This is not particularly a Russian tune but many people asked for Jewish tunes and I will be releasing them from time to time as well.

The melody was taken from an Ukrainian folk dance-song from Bukovina (a variant of Hora). It uses the Phrygian dominant scale, common in music of Romania and Western Ukraine. The commonly used text was probably composed by Abraham Zevi (Zvi) Idelsohn in 1918 to celebrate the British victory in Palestine during World War I as well as the Balfour Declaration.

Those Were the Days, probably, is one of the most popular Russian songs in the West. It was written by a composer Boris Fomin and poet Konstantin Podrevsky in Paris sometime in the 1920′s. The earliest recording by Tamara Tsereteli is marked 1925. Fomin was born in 1900 and that makes him a pretty young man to write such a great song.

Lyrics:

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“Kalinka” (Russian: Калинка) is a Russian song written in 1860 by the composer and folklorist Ivan Larionov and first performed in Saratov as part of a theatrical entertainment that he had composed. Soon it was added to the repertory of a folk choral group.

The refrain of the song refers to the kalinka, which is the snowball tree. It has a speedy tempo and light-hearted lyrics.

Kalinka was made famous in the West by the Soviet figure skaters Irina Rodnina and Alexei Ulanov. Since then it is the most requested tune on any Russian gig.

Lyrics

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A lot of people have asked me the same question: where to get a good quality inexpensive balalaika?

To me “a good quality inexpensive” is almost an oxymoron.

People do not mind buying cars. Fifteen grand on average for something that will be worth next to nothing in the next 5 years! But paying one or two thousand dollars for something that will only increase in value frightens them.

Go to any garage sale and you will see people almost giving away things for which they paid a lot of money just a few years earlier. Have you ever seen a good instrument there? Yes, we all heard stories, but have YOU actually ever seen anything of great value there? No, and I tell you why. No one wants to part with beauty.

I have only one material thing in life that I value and this is my instrument. When I bought it  I paid my one year salary for it. What that Soviet money is worth now? Nothing, zero, zilch, nada!

Luthiers put a lot of their hearts in their instruments, their instruments have souls. Please be nice to them and buy their instruments, allow them to bring even more beauty to this world.

Having said that, you can try these links:

Our own Balalaika Superstore!

Andreas Gerth, a German luthier extraordinaire

Imperskaya.com a great place for balalaika goodies

The Balalaika and Domra Association of America, classifieds

Barynya, classifieds

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Do not scold me, do not reproach me,
I could not not love him;
Having fallen in love
I gave him all I had.

I do not know much about this song except it is pretty sad like a lot of other Russian love songs. In this regard they are very similar to Portuguese Fado songs with their mournful melodies and lyrics.

And here are the lyrics in Russian:

Не корите меня, не браните

Не корите меня, не браните,
Не любить я его не могла;
Полюбивши же, все, что имела,
Все ему я тогда отдала.

Посмотрите, что стало со мною,
Где девалась моя красота,
Где румянец, что спорил с зарею,
Где волнистых волос густота?

Где девичий мой смех серебристый,
Где беспечная резвость моя?
Все ему одному безраздельно
Отдала, безрассудная, я.

Я готова забыть свое горе
И простить ему все его зло,
Не корите ж меня, не браните,
Мне и так тяжело, тяжело…

Такун Ф. И. Славянский базар. – М.: «Современная музыка», 2005

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V.V. Andreev – Waltz Daydreams

Vassily Vassilievich Andreev, the creator of the modern balalaika, wrote only 40 pieces or so for the balalaika or balalaika orchestra. Most of them are pure pearls and one of them is waltz Daydreams or “Gryozy” in Russian. This is a very simple and catching melody that would never get out of style. As a tribute to V. V. Andreev I always open my performances with this waltz.

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Transcribe! is the world’s leading software for helping musicians to work out music from recordings. It is also used by many people for play-along practice, and also for speech transcription.

In this episode you will learn to use this remarkable software to slow down audio or video tracks for transcribing music, learning and practicing. Click here to get this program or here, or on the picture to watch the tutorial video.

Transcribing other people’s solos is an important part of musical self-education. Our best teachers are ourselves, or like my teacher used to say: “I cannot teach you anything, but you can learn.” The technology made it easier for us to slow down audio and video track and that helps us to understand what other musicians do and how they do that.

So far this has been the most useful little computer program. I literally use it every day for hours at a time. I use it for both transcribing and practicing or practicing transcribed solos.

Anyway, let’s start transcribing and practicing!

This is  a medley of tree tunes – Russian Little Christmas Tree, Jewish My Dreydl and American Jingle Bells.

You can get music for it here.

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Dark night, only bullets whistle over the steppe,
Only the wind hums in wires, dimly stars twinkle
In the dark night you are, darling, I know not sleeping,
And by the baby crib you secretly wipe away a tear.

The film “Two Soldiers” urgently needed a song for the character of Mark Bernes, a soldier from Odessa Arkady Dzyubin had to sing to his comrades in a dugout. The music was composed extempore by Nikita Bogoslovsky. After a telephone call poet Vladimir Agatov quickly came and also wrote impromptu lyrics. That same night, Bernes recorded a sound track, and the next day the episode was filmed. But even before the movie hit the screen Leonid Utyosov heard it and included in his repertoire. Because of that it was decided to write  another song for the main characher – and “Kostya the Sailor” was written.

Тёмная ночь

Музыка Никиты Богословского
Слова Владимира Агатова

Темная ночь, только пули свистят по степи,
Только ветер гудит в проводах, тускло звезды мерцают.
В темную ночь ты, любимая, знаю, не спишь,
И у детской кроватки тайком ты слезу утираешь.

Как я люблю глубину твоих ласковых глаз,
Как я хочу к ним прижаться сейчас губами!
Темная ночь разделяет, любимая, нас,
И тревожная, черная степь пролегла между нами.

Верю в тебя, в дорогую подругу мою,
Эта вера от пули меня темной ночью хранила…
Радостно мне, я спокоен в смертельном бою,
Знаю встретишь с любовью меня, что б со мной ни случилось.

Смерть не страшна, с ней не раз мы встречались в степи.
Вот и сейчас надо мною она кружится.
Ты меня ждешь и у детской кроватки не спишь,
И поэтому знаю: со мной ничего не случится!

1942

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