Russian Song is our folk culture. How the ensemble is celebrating its 50th anniversary
The history of the ensemble Russian Song dates back to 1975, when Nadezhda Babkina was still a student at the Gnessin Institute. The idea to create an ensemble came to her spontaneously, at a meeting with her classmates. Someone either jokingly or seriously suggested organizing their own musical group under the leadership of Nadezhda Babkina.
It could have remained just an idea, but Nadezhda Georgievna took it seriously, and began to work on a project that would, in many years, bring her own theater and global fame. By the way, she has been a fan of traditional folk culture since her childhood, and as a 10th grader she won the All-Russian Youth Contest in the genre of Russian folk songs.
How the stars lit up
At first the ensemble consisted of six young women. They sang folk songs, instilling a love for them in those who had little interest in folklore. The audiences gradually grew: if at first the band performed only at student events, it soon began to appear at more significant venues. The first full concert program was held at the House of Composers in 1975.
The ensemble first saw success in 1976. The team traveled to Sochi to participate in the All-Russian contest of Soviet song performers and took the third place, commended for their “purity of sound”. That’s when the soloists realized that they were actually capable of more.
In two more years they could boast of new achievements: a gold medal at the International Folklore Festival in Bratislava (now the capital of Slovakia), and first place at the All-Russian Folk Song Contest in Leningrad. When the ensemble turned 10, male voices were added to the well-established female sextet.
In the early 1980s, the team worked in one of the buildings of the then deconsecrated Znamensky Cathedral on Varvarka Ulitsa. In the meantime, Nadezhda Babkina created five solo programs: Ritual Lyrics, Works of Russian and Soviet composers, Songs of different regions of Russia, Labor Songs and Songs of the South of Russia, as well as the performances Carols and Wedding, which were very popular with audiences.
At the end of the 1980s an important event occurred in the life of the ensemble: they met the chief director of the Jewish Musical Chamber Theater Yuri Sherling. He arranged for the ensemble to appear in his production of the folk opera When the Sand Rises, based on an old Russian ballad about several sisters waiting for their brother to return from a journey. Lyudmila Zykina attended one of the premiere performances. After the performance, I went backstage and said to Nadezhda Georgievna: “Never mind what people say, you’ve already done it.”
This was an important stage in the development of the team.
In 1989 the ensemble founded the Russian Song multifunctional folklore center, and in 1994 it became an independent organization operating under the Moscow Committee of Culture.
A new theater
Once she had began to perform in theaters, Nadezhda Georgievna could not forget about it. She still harbored the dream that she had when she first founded the ensemble, to start up a theater dedicated to folk art. Thanks to the efforts of Nadezhda Babkina, the Moscow Russian Song State Musical Folklore Theater was founded in the building of the former Vstrecha cinema on Sadovaya Chernogryazskaya Ulitsa.
The artists did the renovation on their own: they took out the garbage, whitewashed the ceilings, painted the walls and did many other jobs. Not long after the housewarming they realized that it was time to grow further, that now they needed not just a small room on the first floor of a Stalin-era building, but their own building where they could realize all their plans. Nadezhda Georgievna once again continued heading towards her goal.
Her effort was rewarded: she received land for the construction of a new theater building. An investor was soon found, and the construction was completed in 2012. The auditorium, equipped with the most modern equipment, can accommodate a thousand people. The premises on Sadovaya-Chernogryazskaya Ulitsa became the theatre’s chamber stage.
Throughout this time, the company was also increasing in size. Pyotr Klyuchnikov, Honored Artist of Russia, the chorus master and an artist in the ensemble, joined back in 1997. On the day of the audition they accepted only him and two other soloists, Nadezhda Georgievna’s selection process is very strict.
“It was here that I learned the real secrets of my art. Absolutely everything that happens here makes a certain impression on the performance, including numerous meetings with famous state and cultural figures, the festivals in which we participate, the tours to exotic countries, and the communication between artists,” he said.
From Kamchatka to Paris
The ensemble travels very widely, and have performed all over the country. Natalia Volgina, Honored Artist of Russia and a soloist in the group admits that the tours are quite demanding, but they give her energy and a great deal of joy.
“One of my first trips with the team was to Kamchatka in winter,” she recalls. We experienced the whole gamut of emotions: we flew to villages by helicopter in blizzards, and traveled through the hills at night in a small cold bus. My shoes were freezing to the stage because the heating was barely working. People watched the concert sitting in fur coats, and we sang for them with all our soul.”
For Natalia Volgina and her family, such a tour was a shock at first: she had always been a homebody, studying in her native town and living in her own house, and then suddenly she found herself living out of suitcases, combining full-time studies at the Schnittke Moscow State Institute of Music with working in the Russian Song ensemble. But her parents were understanding, they knew that their daughter had loved the ensemble since childhood, and that it was a great joy for her to be a part of it.
Russian Song has found success outside the country as well. The artists have performed in China, India, Spain, Germany, the USA, Japan, Laos, Australia, Vietnam, Senegal and other countries.
Honored Artist of Russia Elena Ionina is most remembered for her concerts in Ireland, South Korea and Great Britain.
“I was struck by the warmth and enthusiasm with which we were greeted by people of a completely different, unfamiliar culture,” she shared.
Fresh chapters
Today Russian Song is a state academic theater that specializes only in folk culture and aims to popularizes it. It hosts cultural days dedicated to the peoples of Russia, various themed forums, performances of pop artists, charity events, final gala concerts of the All-Russian Cossack Circle Folklore Contest and musicals based on the works of Russian writers.
“As a child, I really wanted to become an actress, to appear on stage, to star in movies, but it didn’t work out,” said Elena Ionina. “And now my dream has come true, and my two passions, acting and singing, have come together. The roles I have all very individual, I am equally happy to go on stage and perform the role of Natalia’s mother in And Quiet Flows the Don, as Alisa Vitalievna in Pokrovskie Vorota, and as Kisa Vorobyaninov’s mother-in-law in The 12 Chairs”.
The productions involve not only members of the theater company, but also guest artists, including Larisa Udovichenko, Andrei Merzlikin, Maria Shukshina, Viktor Dobronravov, Tatiana Arntgolts, Daniil Spivakovsky, Olesya Zheleznyak, Nikolai Dobrynin, Grigory Siyatvinda and many others.
And of course, the theater hosts concerts of the Russian Song groups. In addition to the ensemble of the same name, these include the folk-rock group After 11, accordionist-virtuoso duo the Bondarenko Brothers, solo singers Anna Kuzmishcheva and Evgeny Gor, and the Heritage children’s folklore-theater studio.
The ensemble led by Nadezhda Babkina has recorded more than 100 arrangements of Russian folk songs. The work continues today.
“Just last month, in September, we presented our new album Fashionably Folk”, said Peter Klyuchnikov. “We are searching for new creative forms of expression, constantly inventing something. We take a folk song and give it a second life, arrange it, look at it from a different perspective. And it starts to take on completely new colors.”
Anniversary concert
The holiday concert Land of Talents will be held on October 21 on the stage of the Moscow Russian Song State Academic Theater. The concert will be a kind of creative frontier for the ensemble.
Maxim Lakhno, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation and chief director of the Russian Song theater, describes the concept of the evening.
“The Russian Song Ensemble acts as a collective that brings together those involved in the development and preservation of our intangible folk song heritage. This is the mission of Russian Song — to make folk culture sound more contemporary. The very principle of folk culture is something that lives, evolves and never stops evolving. Folk culture is not the dying embers of the past that we save, but the fire we carry. It’s fundamentally important.”
In the course of its history the composition of the ensemble has changed many times, but one thing has remained unchanged: selfless service to the Russian song tradition and national folk culture.
It is very important not to forget the influence of the ensemble on national culture.
“Of the 50 years since Russian Song was founded I have been with it for the last five”, said Sergey Ryabov, Russian Song’s deputy director for theater development and marketing. “I came to the theater on the eve of the ensemble’s 45th anniversary and I can say that this team never ceases to amaze me with the versatility of their creative interests, their humanity and professionalism, endurance and talent, and most importantly, their love for the audience. During this time we have recorded more than one music album, created more than one new production, and traveled to an incredible number of cities and villages as part of the All-Russian festival-marathon Songs of Russia.” Today there is no other collective that can compare with it, no other group is so versatile and flexible in its creative manifestations. The respect they have for their genre, the history of the country and its traditions is admirable. What is more, the work of the ensemble is not limited to concerts. The soloists compose and record their own songs, write scores, create new compilations, participate in charity and patriotic events, support participants of the special military operation and their families... All this is done by 14 people headed by their ataman, Nadezhda Georgievna Babkina. Through its creative activity the Russian Song ensemble preserves and protects traditions, shapes public tastes, engenders respect for the heritage of our people, and develops folk culture and the wider national culture.”
The evening will take the form of a journey through the history of the Russian Song ensemble, together with its creator and permanent leader People’s Artist of Russia Nadezhda Babkina, and promises to be a truly unique and unforgettable event.
“The destiny of Russian song is to remain immortal, because it is the basis of our life. When people ask me what I mean by happiness, I answer: when the soul is happy. And for the soul to rejoice, all its strings must sound. Russian Song embodies that truth,” says People’s Artist of Russia Nadezhda Babkina, creator and permanent leader of the Russian Song ensemble, and artistic director and director of the theater.
