For me, Santa Monica in California will always be associated with Russian Bluegrass Music. Not an association that everybody makes I'm sure but it was on my only visit to the famous pier on 1992 that I first heard and then purchased this colourfull addition to my collection.
Combining
Russian Folk with Bluegrass is an interesting idea that must have
seemed strange in the pre-Gorbachev soviet union when the group started.
According to the liner notes (about the limit of the research I do) Kukuruza had to exist as an oddity or
almost a carnival act, adding humor to their routines rather than play
as a straight homage to the music of the U.S. Hence the costumes on the
cover.
That image plus the cover of Johnny B. Good (on banjo with
a Russian Accent) would normally be enough for me to buy the CD anyway,
but as it was being played in the store at the time I was taken by the
way the group had managed to fit the two musical traditions together.
Track 1 - Poruska-Paranya was enough to get the CD a trip home with me.
The
playing and arrangements are both well done but it is the Vocals by
Irina Surina that make this recording exceptional. I spoke no Russian in
1992 and have not improved since then but the depth of emotion in the
songs is unmistakable. I still have no idea what the lyrics of Track 4 -
Steppe are about, but to me it conveys the spirit of a people who have
survived hundreds of years of hardship and oppression. Enough to make
you cry into your vodka. In fact it is on the couple of tracks in
English that the whole things does not work so well for me.
There
are other albums by this group still available (and I have them all).
Somehow I always return to this one, it has a freshness and clarity that
is not fully present in the later recordings.
It is good to see
that this is now available as second hand on Amazon as even the
record company (Sugar Hill Records) does not list any other source.
Of the 17 tracks I list 9 as being 4 or 5 star with track 4 and 14 just shading the others.
Links:-
Kukuruza at Amazon.com - Listen to the samples
The Santa Monica Pier
50 thousand music tracks may not be a large collection by the standards of serious music buff but it does equate to approximately 132 days of 24/7 listening to music. I'm not proposing to try to describe or even listen to all of that music in any systematic way but as I re-explore my collection I will post blogs about the music I'm listening to and share some details of where and when I first heard or purchased the album. Stephen Brown
hello from julie
ReplyDeleteJulie,
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Feel free to make any comment or ask any questions about any of the posts.
Stephen