- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw Facebook -
- Cloud
Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw
website -
- Andrew
Cronshaw Facebook -
- Back to Reviews Introduction page
-
Written in fRoots issue
382, April 2015
STRANNIKI
Light Moon
Sketis SKMR 108 (2014)
VASILYEV VECHER
Siberia Land
Sketis SKMR 106 (2014)
VASILY EVHIMOVICH
Vasya Was Here
Sketis SKMR 107 (2014)
THE GRASS HARP
The Grass Harp
Sketis SKMR 112 (2014)
For long it seemed the only scene bringing the sounds and shapes
of Russian traditional music into present reality (as against
uniformly-costumed state-approved ensembles) revolved around the
excellent Sergei Starostin and his associates.
But others are starting to emerge, among
them Stranniki, an appealingly lively septet from Penza in
south-west Russia with strong traditional songs featuring
hard-edged solo and group vocals from three women and one male,
Viktor Klimov, who plays the traditional wind instruments
zhaleika, kalyuka plus wider-world wind instruments such as kaval
and bagpipe, and gusli, Russia’s kantele-kin zither, backed by
folk-rocky guitar, bass and drumkit.
The Vasilyev Vecher ensemble of Tomsk
sings, in polyphony, field-researched songs of the Russian
peasants who relocated to western Siberia in the 16th-18th
centuries. The subjects and original role of the songs are varied
but, while they sing well enough and strongly, they make them all
sound the same by an unvarying, academically glum, plodding style
of delivery; surely the un-named source singers gave them more
variety and levity than this? (The booklet notes, largely in
Russian, not only don’t identify the sources but also the ensemble
members).
In contrast, Vasily Evhimovich, from the
Yaroslavl region on the Volga, sings traditional Russian songs
with spirited, loud, lusty masculinity, solo with his hurdy-gurdy
or accordion, or joined in polyphony by one male and two female
singers.
Most of the text on these
three is in Russian Cyrillic; the English titles given here are
translations.
But The Grass Harp project
double CD has an English title and parallel texts in Russian and
English, so is evidently seen as more exportable as ‘world music’,
though it’s more of a first experiment than yet a contender.
Taking its title from Truman Capote’s novel, its sounds are Stefan
Charisius’s kora with thumping, clicking percussion, plus
electronics and touches of other ethnic instruments, woven around
traditional Udmurtian, Besermyan and Russian songs, sung with
quiet intimacy by either Udmurt Maria Korepanova or Russian Irina
Pyzhianova.
The first disc is a studio recording; the
second, a live concert, has more spontaneity and liveliness, still
kora-centred but with more songs, the singers more assertive and
featuring more of the other players of instruments such as gusli
and Jew’s harp, occasionally interrupted by largely unconnected
bursts of beginner-level stuttering laptop live-sampling-ism.
© 2015 Andrew Cronshaw
You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please
credit the writer and fRoots.
Links:
fRoots - The
feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music
magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose
permission they're reproduced here.
It's not practical to give, and keep up
to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the
artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them,
and where possible buy direct from the artists.
For readers/listeners across
the Atlantic, CDRoots.com
in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent
online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these
reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com
For more reviews click on the regions
below
NORDIC
BALTIC
IBERIA (& islands)
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS
OTHER EUROPEAN AMERICAS OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL
- Back to Reviews Introduction page
-