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Written in fRoots issue 199/200, 2000

ENSEMBLE PESNOKHORKI
Vol.I - Traditional Songs Of Cossacks
Face Music FM 50017 (1998)
Vol.II - Traditional Russian & Cossack Songs of Siberia
Face Music FM 50019 (1998)

FARLANDERS FEATURING INNA ZHELANNAYA & SERGEY STAROSTIN
Farlanders
Green Wave GRCD-98-1 (1998)

Based in Barnaul, south of Novosibirsk in the Altai region, the southernmost part of Siberia, Ensemble Pesnokhorki was founded in 1979 by ethnomusicologist Olga Abramova to perform and teach the material she and the members collect on field-trips. On these two albums they concentrate on their home region of Altaiska Kray (volume II) and on the music of the Cossacks, descendants of the warlike groups who for centuries maintained independent existences within the state and eventually settled across Russia including in Altai (volume I).
      Pesnokhorki is a collection and revival group, bringing the music from its sources to a concert situation and so working at one remove from its former environment and social context while aiming at an “authentic” sound. However, unlike those many Soviet-era ensembles that tamed the music into carefully chorally harmonised and arranged folklore-iconic images of the happy peoples of the great state, it shows no imprint of classical-conditioned arrangement or voice training and projects genuine feel for the raw spirit. Whether polyphonic or solo-led with group responses, the singing here is powerful and gritty, with strong full-blooded male and tight-throated women’s voices, shouted interjections and exuberant top lines. Both albums are largely vocal, with some items using energetic accompaniment on gudok (gadulka-like fiddle), accordion, gusli (small zither like a Baltic kantele), reed pipes and metal and wooden percussion. They’re a very welcome window into a world far from the balalaika stereotype.

      The Pesnokhorki albums are on a Swiss label; there’s little money in the Russian Federation for making, releasing or buying minority-interest CDs, while anything attracting substantial consumer demand becomes a new product on the bootleggers’ cut-price stalls. Nevertheless Green Wave International is based in Moscow, and has released the elegantly digipak enfolded second album by Inna Zhelannaya and Sergey Starostin’s band Farlanders, called, as far as I can ascertain - the title’s in Russian - Farlanders. The track listing, band and some other info is in English though, and if it helps in searching for it, the cover’s yellow and black.
      It’s a dynamic mix of Russian folk influences and instrumentation from Starostin’s and Sergey Klevensky’s shepherd horns and reeds with a lush or meaty rocky-jazzy framework of warm six-string bass and drums and Zhelannaya’s electric and acoustic guitars, led by her flexible vocals or occasionally Starostin’s appealingly grainy voice. By not managing to catch the band’s set at the impossibly fun-packed Stockholm Womex I clearly missed out.
      By way of background, Zhelannaya and Starostin were members of the popular Russian band Allians, which collaborated with Mari Boine on the 1992 Møte i Moskva album, re-released on CD as Winter in Moscow (and Starostin and Boine feature on the new release by the remarkable Russian/Senegalese/Indian band Vershki Da Koreshki).
      Farlanders and Pesnokhorki are impressive members of the vanguard; it’s exciting to anticipate what’s yet to come musically from the diverse regions and republics of the vast area still administered, more or less, from Moscow.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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