Month: July 2020

I was taught from childhood that profanity and vulgarity are unworthy forms of language, and I don’t use them in everyday speech. However, over the years, I’ve come to understand that sometimes it’s precisely hardcore swearing that adds meanings and shades to language that sound different in literary language.

So, I’ve become a bit more relaxed about them when they’re appropriate.

And there’s the song Backup (Подмога) performed by Boris Grebenshchikov. Originally, this song was by another band, called HZ for short, and in common language… well, Russians can guess.

I’ve heard it in the original version, but in Grebenshchikov’s rendition, it sounds much more soulful, and the profane and vulgar phrases here come across in a completely different way. As Pushnoy once said in one of his songs, “a song is nothing; the performance is everything.”

The video sequence from the film Battery Number One layered over it adds a unique color.

By the way, I couldn’t find whether this song by BG is included in any of his albums.

Please excuse me for mostly sharing songs lately, but a few things have converged. The events in my homeland and my emotional response to them. Exhaustion from yet another work sprint that’s on the edge of burnout, but you push on because you believe in what you’re doing… and a sense of inner emptiness as a reaction to all of this.

And then suddenly, there’s a new song, performed by five (!!!) Belarusian bands, set to the verses of Vladimir Neklyaev, the now-disenfranchised Belarusian poet. These verses were written after the events of 2010, when he tried to run for president but… it didn’t happen.

The song tears at my emotions; it resonates so closely with everything I feel inside right now that I just freeze, and all I can whisper at the end is “Wow!” before playing it on repeat.

Here is a literal translation of the original Vladimir Neklyaev’s verse:

Vladimir Neklyaev “To You”

I remember myself in a teenage coat,
We were rowdy boys back then,
But none of us were scoundrels,
Where did you learn to be scoundrels?

We aimed our minds at different things,
Naive, careless fools were we,
But we were never villains,
Where did you learn to be villains?

Yes, we feared prison, the far-flung camps,
We wanted to live normal lives,
But we were never bootlickers,
How did you manage to become bootlickers?

Yes, to avoid dying in filth and dust,
We sold poems and stories,
But we could never sell our conscience,
You wouldn’t understand that, people without conscience.

You who kiss filth in deep embrace,
Be it in palaces of kings or dukes,
You failed to become human beings,
But succeeded in becoming human scum.

The band is also relatively new and hails from Rogachev, a smaller Belarusian city.

These past weeks have been full of new songs from Belarusian artists that really strike a chord. Many of them were completely new to me. Here’s another song about Belarusians—this time in Russian—from TOR BAND.

Last week, the Belarusian band NAVIBAND released a new song that I unexpectedly enjoyed a lot.

The band gained recognition when they represented Belarus in Eurovision 2017 with the song “Гiсторыя майго жыцця” (“Story of My Life”). I liked their song, though it only placed 17th in the audience rankings.

Their new song was written during the presidential campaign in Belarus, and if you wish, you can find echoes of the events currently unfolding in the country within it. But I appreciate it just as it is. The lyrics, the music, the performance—all of it resonates with me. Listen to their new song, Iншымi (“Others”):