Bulat Okudzhava
Encyclopedia
Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (also transliterated as Boulat Okudjava, Okoudjava, or Okoudzhava; , Georgian
: ბულატ ოკუჯავა) (May 9, 1924 – June 12, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian
poet
, writer
, musician
, novelist, and singer-songwriter
. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song" (авторская песня, avtorskaya pesnya). He was born in Moscow
and died in Paris
. He was the author of about 200 songs, set to his own poetry. His songs are a mixture of Russian poetic and folksong traditions and the French chansonnier
style represented by such contemporaries of Okudzhava as Georges Brassens
. Though his songs were never overtly political (in contrast to those of some of his fellow "bards
"), the freshness and independence of Okudzhava's artistic voice presented a subtle challenge to Soviet cultural authorities, who were thus hesitant for many years to give official sanction to Okudzhava as a singer-songwriter.
on May 9, 1924 into a family of communists who had come from Tbilisi
, the capital of Georgia
, for study and work connected with the Communist Party
. The son of a Georgian father and an Armenian
mother, Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian
. This was because his mother, who spoke Armenian
, Georgian and Azerbaijani
, had always requested everyone who came to visit her house: "Please, speak the language of Lenin
- Russian." His father, a high-ranking Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge
and executed as a German
spy on the basis of a false accusation. His mother was also arrested and spent 18 years in the prison camps of the Gulag
(1937–1955). Bulat Okudzhava returned to Tbilisi and lived there with relatives.
In 1941, at the age of 17, one year before his scheduled school graduation, he volunteered for the Red Army
infantry
and from 1942 participated in the war with Nazi Germany. With the end of the Second World War
, after his discharge from the service in 1945, he returned to Tbilisi where he passed his high school graduation tests and enrolled at Tbilisi State University
, graduating in 1950. After graduating, he worked as a teacher - first in a rural school in the village of Shamordino
in Kaluga district
, and later in the city of Kaluga
itself.
In 1956, three years after the death of Joseph Stalin
, Okudzhava returned to Moscow, where he worked first as an editor in the publishing house "Young Guard", and later as the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former USSR, Literaturnaya Gazeta
("Literary Newspaper"). It was then, in the middle of the 1950s, that he began to compose songs and to perform them, accompanying himself on a Russian guitar
.
Soon he was giving concerts. He only employed a few chords
and had no formal training in music, but he possessed an exceptional melodic gift, and the intelligent lyrics of his songs blended perfectly with his music and his voice. His songs were praised by his friends, and amateur recordings were made. These unofficial recordings were widely copied (as magnitizdat
) and spread across the USSR and Poland
, where other young people picked up guitars and started singing the songs for themselves. In 1969, his lyrics appeared in the classic Soviet film White Sun of the Desert
.
Though Okudzhava's songs were not published by any official media organization until the late 1970s, they quickly achieved enormous popularity (especially among the intelligentsia
) - mainly in the USSR at first, but soon among Russian-speakers in other countries as well. Vladimir Nabokov
, for example, cited his Sentimental March in the novel Ada or Ardor
.
Okudzhava, however, regarded himself primarily as a poet and claimed that his musical recordings were insignificant. During the 1980s, he also published a great deal of prose (his novel The Show is Over won him the Russian Booker Prize in 1994). By the 1980s, recordings of Okudzhava performing his songs finally began to be officially released in the Soviet Union, and many volumes of his poetry appeared separately. In 1991, he was awarded the USSR State Prize
. He supported the reform movement in the USSR and in October 1993, signed the Letter of Forty-Two
.
Okudzhava died in Paris on June 12, 1997, and is buried in the Vagankovo Cemetery
in Moscow. A monument marks the building at 43 Arbat Street where he lived. His dacha
in Peredelkino
is open to the public as a museum.
A minor planet
3149 Okudzhava
discovered by Czech astronomer Zdeňka Vávrová
in 1981 is named after him.
Okudzhava tuned his Russian guitar
to the "Russian tuning" of D'-G'-C-D-g-b-d' (thickest to thinnest string), and often lowered it by one or two tones to better accommodate his voice. He played in a classical manner, usually finger picking the strings in an ascending/descending arpeggio
or waltz pattern, with an alternating bass line picked by the thumb.
Initially Okudzhava was taught three basic chords, and towards the end of his life he claimed to know a total of seven.
Many of Okudzhava's songs are in the key of C minor (with downtuning B flat or A minor), centering around the C minor chord (X00X011, thickest to thinnest string), then progressing to a D 7 (00X0433), then either an E-flat minor (X55X566) or C major (55X5555). In addition to the aforementioned chords, the E-flat major chord (X55X567) was often featured in songs in a major key, usually C major (with downtuning B-flat or A major).
By the nineties, Okudzhava adopted the increasingly popular six string guitar but retained the Russian tuning, subtracting the fourth string, which was convenient to his style of playing.
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
: ბულატ ოკუჯავა) (May 9, 1924 – June 12, 1997) was a Soviet and Russian
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
, novelist, and singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song" (авторская песня, avtorskaya pesnya). He was born in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and died in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He was the author of about 200 songs, set to his own poetry. His songs are a mixture of Russian poetic and folksong traditions and the French chansonnier
Chansonnier
A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...
style represented by such contemporaries of Okudzhava as Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens
Georges Brassens , 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.Brassens was born in Sète, a town in southern France near Montpellier...
. Though his songs were never overtly political (in contrast to those of some of his fellow "bards
Bard (Soviet Union)
The term bard came to be used in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, and continues to be used in Russia today, to refer to singer-songwriters who wrote songs outside the Soviet establishment, similarly to beatnik folk singers of the United States...
"), the freshness and independence of Okudzhava's artistic voice presented a subtle challenge to Soviet cultural authorities, who were thus hesitant for many years to give official sanction to Okudzhava as a singer-songwriter.
Life
Bulat Okudzhava was born in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
on May 9, 1924 into a family of communists who had come from Tbilisi
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, the capital of Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, for study and work connected with the Communist Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
. The son of a Georgian father and an Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
mother, Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. This was because his mother, who spoke Armenian
Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, Georgian and Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, had always requested everyone who came to visit her house: "Please, speak the language of Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
- Russian." His father, a high-ranking Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
and executed as a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
spy on the basis of a false accusation. His mother was also arrested and spent 18 years in the prison camps of the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
(1937–1955). Bulat Okudzhava returned to Tbilisi and lived there with relatives.
In 1941, at the age of 17, one year before his scheduled school graduation, he volunteered for the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...
and from 1942 participated in the war with Nazi Germany. With the end of the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, after his discharge from the service in 1945, he returned to Tbilisi where he passed his high school graduation tests and enrolled at Tbilisi State University
Tbilisi State University
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University , better known as Tbilisi State University , is a university established on 8 February 1918 in Tbilisi, Georgia. TSU is the oldest university in the whole Caucasus region...
, graduating in 1950. After graduating, he worked as a teacher - first in a rural school in the village of Shamordino
Shamordino
Shamordino may refer to the following:* The Kazan St Ambrose Convent in Kaluga Oblast* The village of Shamordino, Zhukovka District, Kaluga Oblast, near which the convent is located....
in Kaluga district
Kaluga Oblast
Kaluga Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the city of Kaluga.-Geography:Kaluga Oblast is located in the central part of the East European Plain. The Smolensk Highland lays in the western and north-western part of the oblast, while the Central Russian Highland -...
, and later in the city of Kaluga
Kaluga
Kaluga is a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: It is served by Grabtsevo Airport.-History:...
itself.
In 1956, three years after the death of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Okudzhava returned to Moscow, where he worked first as an editor in the publishing house "Young Guard", and later as the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former USSR, Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and Soviet Union.- Overview :...
("Literary Newspaper"). It was then, in the middle of the 1950s, that he began to compose songs and to perform them, accompanying himself on a Russian guitar
Russian guitar
The Russian guitar is a seven-string acoustic guitar that arrived in Russia toward the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, most probably as an evolution of the cittern, kobza, and torban...
.
Soon he was giving concerts. He only employed a few chords
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
and had no formal training in music, but he possessed an exceptional melodic gift, and the intelligent lyrics of his songs blended perfectly with his music and his voice. His songs were praised by his friends, and amateur recordings were made. These unofficial recordings were widely copied (as magnitizdat
Magnitizdat
Magnitizdat is a term used to describe the process of re-copying and self distributing live audio tape recordings in the Soviet Union that were not available commercially...
) and spread across the USSR and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, where other young people picked up guitars and started singing the songs for themselves. In 1969, his lyrics appeared in the classic Soviet film White Sun of the Desert
White Sun of the Desert
White Sun of the Desert , a classic 'Eastern' or Ostern film of the Soviet Union.The film is one of the most popular Russian films of all time. Its blend of action, comedy, music and drama has made it wildly successful and it has since achieved the status of a cult film in Soviet and Russian...
.
Though Okudzhava's songs were not published by any official media organization until the late 1970s, they quickly achieved enormous popularity (especially among the intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
) - mainly in the USSR at first, but soon among Russian-speakers in other countries as well. Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, for example, cited his Sentimental March in the novel Ada or Ardor
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.Ada began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects: "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra." In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel...
.
Okudzhava, however, regarded himself primarily as a poet and claimed that his musical recordings were insignificant. During the 1980s, he also published a great deal of prose (his novel The Show is Over won him the Russian Booker Prize in 1994). By the 1980s, recordings of Okudzhava performing his songs finally began to be officially released in the Soviet Union, and many volumes of his poetry appeared separately. In 1991, he was awarded the USSR State Prize
USSR State Prize
The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....
. He supported the reform movement in the USSR and in October 1993, signed the Letter of Forty-Two
Letter of Forty-Two
The Letter of Forty-Two was an open letter signed by forty-two well-known Russian literati, aimed at Russian society, the president and government, in reaction to the events of September – October 1993...
.
Okudzhava died in Paris on June 12, 1997, and is buried in the Vagankovo Cemetery
Vagankovo Cemetery
Vagan'kovskoye Cemetery , established in 1771, is located in the Krasnaya Presnya district of Moscow...
in Moscow. A monument marks the building at 43 Arbat Street where he lived. His dacha
Dacha
Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...
in Peredelkino
Peredelkino
Peredelkino is a dacha complex situated just to the southwest of Moscow, Russia.-History:The settlement originated as the estate of Peredeltsy, owned by the Leontievs , then by Princes Dolgorukov and by the Samarins. After a railway passed through the village in the 19th century, it was renamed...
is open to the public as a museum.
A minor planet
Minor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
3149 Okudzhava
3149 Okudzhava
3149 Okudzhava is a main-belt asteroid discovered on September 22, 1981 by Z. Vavrova at Kleť Observatory.- External links :...
discovered by Czech astronomer Zdeňka Vávrová
Zdenka Vávrová
Zdeňka Vávrová is a Czech astronomer.She co-discovered periodic comet 134P/Kowal-Vávrová. She had observed it as an asteroid, which received the provisional designation 1983 JG, without seeing any cometary coma. However, later images by Charles T. Kowal showed a coma.She has also discovered a...
in 1981 is named after him.
Music
Okudzhava, like most bards, did not come from a musical background. He learned basic guitar skills with the help of some friends. He also knew how to play basic chords on a piano.Okudzhava tuned his Russian guitar
Russian guitar
The Russian guitar is a seven-string acoustic guitar that arrived in Russia toward the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, most probably as an evolution of the cittern, kobza, and torban...
to the "Russian tuning" of D'-G'-C-D-g-b-d' (thickest to thinnest string), and often lowered it by one or two tones to better accommodate his voice. He played in a classical manner, usually finger picking the strings in an ascending/descending arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
or waltz pattern, with an alternating bass line picked by the thumb.
Initially Okudzhava was taught three basic chords, and towards the end of his life he claimed to know a total of seven.
Many of Okudzhava's songs are in the key of C minor (with downtuning B flat or A minor), centering around the C minor chord (X00X011, thickest to thinnest string), then progressing to a D 7 (00X0433), then either an E-flat minor (X55X566) or C major (55X5555). In addition to the aforementioned chords, the E-flat major chord (X55X567) was often featured in songs in a major key, usually C major (with downtuning B-flat or A major).
By the nineties, Okudzhava adopted the increasingly popular six string guitar but retained the Russian tuning, subtracting the fourth string, which was convenient to his style of playing.
Fiction in English translation
- The Art of Needles and Sins, (story), from The New Soviet Fiction, Abbeville Press, NY, 1989.
- Good-bye, Schoolboy! and Promoxys, (stories), from Fifty Years of Russian Prose, Volume 2, M.I.T Press, MA, 1971.
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Secret Agent Shipov in Pursuit of Count Leo Tolstoy, in the year 1862, (novel), Abelard-Schuman, UK, 1973.
- Nocturne: From the Notes of Lt. Amiran Amilakhvari, Retired, (novel), Harper and Row, NY, 1978.
- A Taste of Liberty, (novel), Ardis Publishers, 1986.
- Girl of My Dreams, (story), from 50 Writers: An Anthology of 20th Century Russian Short Stories, Academic Studies Press, 2011.