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Last year, Dmitri Aleksandrovich gave a moving performance of Журавли (Zhuravli: The White Cranes)… I find this the most appropriate piece to mark his passing. There’s also the gutsy original rendition by the late great M N Bernes (People’s Artist of the RSFSR). Mark Naumovich’s version is much more stark and raw… listen to him… it’s à propos for such a day (he also died relatively young of cancer, at age 57). This was the last recording that Bernes made… many thought it his musing on his approaching death. That may be the same with the above performance, as it occurred one year after the diagnosis of a brain tumour.
D A Khvorostovsky was a People’s Artist of Russia. I D Kobzon (People’s Artist of the USSR) reported that his funeral will be 27 November at the Chaikovsky Zal of the Moscow Conservatoire. Dmitri Aleksandrovich wasn’t a believer… his ashes will lie in Novodevichy and in his Siberian home. However, we stand in respect before the mystery of death and wish the best for his family and friends, and express sincere and honest condolences at his passing (as did President Putin). Secular people simply aren’t religious believers (for a multitude of reasons, many grounded in actuality); we should respect them and their beliefs, without reserve. I bow before all of Dmitri Aleksandrovich’s loved ones and express my solidarity with their pain and my community with their grief.
ВЕЧНАЯ ЕМУ ПАМЯТЬ!
A light went out in our musical firmament… the whole world mourns…
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Voices from Russia 
16 September 2018. We Bid Farewell to a Real Mensch…
Tags: death, Iosif Kobzon, memorial, Music, patriotic, patriotism, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Russian culture, Russian music, Soviet music
I D Kobzon with DNR Head of State A V Zakharchenko, murdered by the CIA and its Galician nationalist goons one day after Iosif Davydovich’s death
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I D Kobzon with two of his granddaughters at his 80th birthday concert in 2017
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One of the lights in our musical firmament went out with the death of I D Kobzon. Iosif Davydovich wasn’t only a great musician, he was a patriot, a man who never forgot where he came from… in other words, a mensch. He was a Donetsk homeboy and he always remembered his hometown and his homies. He went back often and supported the patriot resistance to the Galician Uniate nationalist trash. He knew the depth of the antisemitic hatred that animated most of the nationalists in the American-installed junta (ironic, isn’t it, that the Americans who support the junta most vociferously are Jews). The lying Anglos put him on their “sanctions list” for that. Iosif Davydovich couldn’t visit relatives in the USA. Great people, the Anglos, aren’t they? The depth of their evil and greed never ceases to amaze me.
Iosif Davydovich stood for what he believed in. Ponder this… the Anglos adulate John McCain and hate I D Kobzon. You show the world your true character with whom you honour. That speaks volumes of the Anglos… none of it good…
Вечная ему память
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