Soviet Rock Idol Tsoi Celebrated in Google Doodle

Special Google “doodle” to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of Viktor Tsoi

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Tsoi’s song Filmi (Films)

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Kino singing Peremen ((We Want Changes)

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Now, let’s hear from Akvarium…

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Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi… whose death in a car crash in 1990 quickly earned him cult status… had the 50th anniversary of his birth celebrated with a Google doodle. The search engine turned its homepage emblem into graffiti, overlapped with the words Tsoi and Kino, Tsoi’s band. It’s a nod to the famous “Tsoi Wall” in downtown Moscow, which pays tribute to the late musician. The lead singer and songwriter for Kino, which he helped to found in 1982, Tsoi died in August 1990 in the then-Soviet republic of Latvia. He was 28 years old. Events in tribute to the late musician will be held across Russia, with a concert featuring cover versions of his songs to be held in Moscow.

Kino was, along with Boris Grebenshchikov‘s Akvarium, part of the Leningrad (now St Petersburg) underground rock scene. Whilst drawing heavily on Western rock and especially New Wave, Kino crafted a uniquely Russian sound complete with lyrics often critical of the Soviet Union. Indeed, the group encapsulated much of the 1980s generation’s disillusionment with the Soviet system. In the 1986 song Filmi (Films), Tsoi sang, “I knew everything would turn out badly, but I didn’t know [that it would happen] so soon”. With the spread of Mikhail Gorbachyov‘s perestroika reform policies, Kino achieved even greater acclaim, culminating in a concert at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium in June 1990. It was the last time Tsoi appeared on stage.

Ever since his death, critics argued over how we should judge Tsoi’s musical legacy, and whether he’d still have a cult following if he were alive. However, on Friday, standing by the graffiti-covered Tsoi Wall just off Old Arbat, Moscow’s main tourist stretch, Kino fan Oleg, 47, dismissed such speculation, saying, “That’s futile, Tsoi gave me hope. Kino and a couple of other groups were the only things that kept me going in the late 1980s”. Another man shouted, “Tsoi is alive!” before starting to play Peremen (We Want Changes), one of Kino’s most popular songs, on his guitar.

21 June 2012

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/art_living/20120621/174155307.html

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23 March 2012. A Point to Ponder… Do We Need “Religion?”

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Indian Dreams of Boris Grebenshchikov

Russian rocker Boris Grebenshchikov (1953- )

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Concerts by the legendary Russian rock band Akvarium earned high praise across India. The musicians are playing an anthology of their works in Delhi and Bangalore as part of the Year of Russia in India. Commonly known as the “guru of Russian rock”, the leader of Akvarium, Boris Grebenshchikov, has paid regular visits to India since the 1970s. As did the Beatles, the Mexican guitarist Carlos Santana, or the American jazz pianist Alice Coltrane, Grebenshchikov sees India as the “Home of the Spirit”. The father of Russian rock said nothing’s as helpful in broadening a musician’s outlook as travelling and new experiences. “I put what I see around me into my songs. If I see churches, there’ll be church-related themes in them. Buddhist and Christian allusions are common in my texts”.

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Grebenshchikov isn’t just travelling the entire length and breadth of the world studying the traditions of different peoples, he penetrates deeply into the peculiarities of their cultures. He said, “Religious thinking is the most significant of the assets acquired by humanity. It teaches us how to be your own self and take pleasure in it. No other science teaches us that. Strictly speaking, religion’s a science of human happiness, even though it’s often presented in quite a different light”. A passion for religious teachings, Buddhism included, produced a profound impact on Grebenshchikov and inspired him into a new activity, translating books by Indian spiritual masters.

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“There must be a vast number of translators capable of translating the stuff”, he said, “but when I saw treatises on Buddhism in the translation of a scholar well familiar with the terminology but knowing little of the meaning they carry, I knew it wouldn’t drive the point home. I had to translate the holy book Katha Upanishad after I had read five translations into Russian from which it was clear that the translators knew nothing of what they were translating”. India responded with gratitude to the musical and literary legacy of Boris. In India, the musician has been dubbed “Purushottama”, which, translated from Sanskrit, means the person who goes beyond the bounds of any restrictions, and he’s been presented with the “Award Of Friendship”, which is conferred on people who have made a significant contribution to the development of friendly ties between the two countries.

15 April 2008

Tatiana Zavialova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=25719&cid=62&p=15.04.2008