Russian Music

So a twitter conversation with a couple of old school chaps made me want to pop a little thing your way. It occurs to me that there is a LOT of English language music that has penetrated the continent - but not, it would seem, Russia. Our local stolovaya plays music channels (standard practise) which function in the same way as a lot of the English ones do (or did). Except one key difference, they only play Russian pop music.

I actually really like Russian rap music. Or rather, this guy right here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI2mPPjviBE . The song is called "Look into my Eyes" and is all about how he is a working class hero adn a self made man. basically. His name is St1m - pronounced like "steam" - but I would consider him to be the Russian Eminem. I've also found his music great for learning Russian pronunciation - particularly which vowel to put emphasis on. Russians only pronounce one vowel and there are no rules behind it, which makes it a nightmare for English speakers, who pronounce every vowel as it is written. It's a blog post in itself, but basically I think there is a reason it is known as the "stress" of a word!

Russian pop music is a genre of its own. A lot of it sounds exactly the same, but I am going to present to you a few gems of the industry which have actually stood out. I say all this, I mention the gems of Russian music, when actually the intention behind this post was to bemoan the fact that all the stuff out at the moment sounds exactly the same! This is arguably why I cannot find a current video to show you - the songs I've included in this blog are all from 2002/2009/2011 and as I say, stood out for me.

As is probably to be expected with Russia, they have their women who are a bit like Shakira to us English lot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4XrvbaiHpg (Vera Brezhneva, who is actually Ukrainian). This song is called "Love Saves the World" and I confess to actually rather liking it -it's a great summer song. I think every woman has a secret inner Vera Brezhneva that she is dying to unleash. As anti-feminist as that sounds - but let's not go into that right now. Vera Brezhneva is an immensely successful singer over here and it's not hard to see why.

The thing is though that the women are often completely oversexualised and more so than in the West, and yet we complain about Rihanna in the UK as being a bad role model - we frankly ain't seen nothin' yet! Maybe this next video is just a particularly bad example of inappropriate female roles and the Russian alpha-male. I warn you, you will be shocked, those girls are sure to catch their deaths of cold - but I just think the tractor full of dollar bills and the accordion solo are rather amusing in an "OH, RUSSIA" kind of way. I suspect this video is meant in a satirical context, as per that of the song, but it's still pretty shocking. I apologise in advance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r5NIF5d7A0&feature=related . This song is by a rapper who reminds me somewhat of Pitbull/Fat Joe, Potap, and features a famous Ukrainian singer called Nastya Kamenskikh. The song is called "Not a Couple" and is about how the media keeps portraying them as a couple, which they're not, they're friends. The lyrics mention Chuck Norris too in a banterous way, which I must say I appreciate. Just maybe just listen to the song, the video is... yeah. The Georgians (referring to the time period here, not the inhabitants of the country of Georgia - we must be clear on this one!) would have had to have got the smelling salts out...  Potap and Nastya Kamenskikh are actually very popular, which I presume is in part for the satirical nature of their music. This video here is another example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzz-7BzZlRI&feature=related . "Don't love me for my Brains" - pretty sure this is meant in jest too!

 As it happens, I actually like Nastya Kamenskikh when she performs solo material too. I can actually understand this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx280IwxbBw&feature=related and it's pretty clever. It's about Red Riding Hood and her life as a fairytale character and how people expect her to act a certain way. "You think my life is so easy and excellent" "How many roles am I supposed to play? " "I want a Prince at the end of this, not a grandmother and pies!"

And then there is this one, which was released by the group Steklovata has been parodied by groups in at least 2 Eastern European countries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWa9sJzgM4A . It is possibly the most hysterical thing I've ever seen associated with Russia on the internet (and as any viewer of RudeTube on E4 will agree, there is a LOT). They're singing about the New Year (Novi God) and just well...

Yeah...

St Petersburg: A seasonal timelapse

I am by nature exceptionally curious, especially when it comes to observing how the passage of time affects a place. I particularly love watching how things change with the seasons. Russia is a country where you can experience all four in one day, so allows me to indulge in this rather pretentious passion of mine.

 This is the view from my window, each taken around a month apart. 

Taken 07/09/12

Taken 6/10/12

Taken 31/10/12

I can tell you one thing, chaps

So today it really hit me. Square between the eyes as I stood in the middle of the Haymarket.


I LIVE in St Petersburg. It's taken a while. I've replaced my shower gel twice (my friend's definition of 'living'  somewhere is when you have to replace your shower gel/shampoo - a good analogy). I've had a routine for several weeks now, so it wasn't at the very second that this routine was established that I realised it.


I will tell you the second thing - it is going to be a painful wrench to leave this place. There are so many things I am going to miss, that is for sure. I'm past the halfway point now and I have my reading week next week, but after then I shall have only 6 weeks left in this city. Reverse culture shock will be much worse than the actual culture shock, that is for sure.

In answer to an oft-posed question...

"You don't know what it's like! You – neither of you – you've never had to face him, have you? You think it's just memorizing a bunch of spells and throwing them at him, like you're in class or something?"

Harry Potter on fighting Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (Rowling, JK, Bloomsbury publishing, 2003)

This what I would equate to speaking Russian. It is like no other language that I have ever experienced. People ask me what it is like to speak Russian as I do not think we get nearly enough exposure to it in England, presumably as a result of their political situation over the years. (Let's not go into that just now).

For those to whom Russian is unfamiliar, I am going to give you a brief insight to why I have such a love/hate relationship with it. 

We will ignore the issue of there being a different alphabet for now. Let us not run before we can walk. We must remember that Russian is NOT English but in Cyrillic. If you're surrounded by English but in Cyrillic, you're probably looking at an advert.

Firstly, in Russian, you have to know exactly what you are talking about and how each word fits into the sentence. You cannot just memorise a load of words and bandy them around as we do rather shamelessly in English.

Who does what to whom? Where do they do it? How do they do it? When did they do it? For those of you familiar with Latin and German, you will understand what I mean by the 'case' system. For those of you unfamiliar, it is the answer to each of those questions. In English, we would use prepositions (on/under/to/across/up etc) and word order to convey the meaning of the sentence. You'd add a verb to state when and what was done. You'd maybe add an adjective but those are just mere frivolities. (I jest)

For example. (I should credit the Russian textbook from which I learned this in my first year of University - Brian Kemple's Essential Russian Grammar. Fantastically simple text, I owe that man a lot):

Peter throws the ball to Paul. Fine. The order of the words states that Paul is the recipient of the ball, which is thrown to him by Peter. The preposition states that Paul is the indirect object, whereas the ball is the object - in this case, the object being thrown. Peter is the subject, as he is the one doing the action.

In Russian, there would be no preposition.

Transliterated into Russian, the sentence would be "Pyotr brosaet myach Pavlu".

Got that? Good. 

In Russian, there are six cases.

The Nominative - the name of something, refers to the subject of a sentence (in the above context, Peter)

The Accusative - the direct object (in the above context, the ball)

The Genitive - refers to possession, quantity and seemingly miscellaneous other things. My Russian friend lives by the motto of "When in doubt, use the Genitive case". Wise words.

The Dative - refers to the indirect object, the person to whom something is done. In the above context, this is Paul.

The Instrumental - refers to the way in which things are carried out, usually accompanies the word with. ie. "How do you eat soup? With a spoon"

The Prepositional - refers to the place in which things happen. For example, we can expand the above sentence to say "In the park..." In Russian this would be in the prepositional case. As the name would suggest, this verb can only be used with a preposition.

A point of interest for you all: There were seven cases originally, the seventh being the Vocative case, which was used solely for addressing God. These days, it exists only in the phrase "Bozhe moy!" which is rather ironic, as it means "Oh my God!".

Rather like German, Russian has 3 genders - Masculine, Feminine, Neuter and then plural. Each of these genders declines differently when used in each of these cases and there are different rules which apply to each - so it means quite a bit of learning by rote to get them firmly lodged into your head.

Russian has quite a simple tense system - especially compared with English and French. There are 3 tenses, past, present and future. The trickiness comes in when you learn that each verb is one of a pair and the verbs within it are not interchangeable. In the pair, one verb will be the imperfective variant and the other will be the perfective variant. Imperfective refers to an incomplete action and is therefore used in the present tense, or the incomplete past of an action. Perfective refers to a complete action and is used in the future tense or refers to a completed past action. The concept is not complicated - but it means you have twice as much to remember when speaking!

Russian is therefore a very precise language with very subtle nuances. Where we would have a different verb to express each the following, Russians would use a prefix on one verb.

To note down, to take note from, to subscribe to, to sign, to correspond with, to write up to a certain point, to rewrite. The logic is arguably simple - all of these verbs involve writing, so a prefix is enough to change the meaning (in Russian logic anyway). To an English person though, all of this seems rather pedantic and frustrating - especially when faced with a long list of words that all look EXACTLY THE SAME.

This pedantry has its worst manifestation in the system of verbs of motion. Russian students the world over are all now cringing as I mention the 3 dreaded words. There are 14 pairs of verbs of motion. The rules of perfective/imperfective only apply when the verb is prefixed, otherwise each part of the pair refers to a multidirectional or unidirectional motion. There is actually a Soviet joke about this which is essentially a one liner. "Ivan shol v magazin". John went to the shop (and in the nuanced meaning: and didn't come back - ie he was arrested). It's more funny if you get the full context of it, but an analysis of the Russian national humour is for another day and another post! Each of these verbs has any number of prefixes which again change the nuance of the verb as well as the tense. It's taken me the best part of 2 years to actually get my head around verbs of motion, they are a complete mind-frier! Put simply, Russian people never 'go' anywhere!

Oh, and a final note about the alphabet as I know that for most people it is the biggest obstacle when starting off. There are two Russian alphabets, just to put you off even further, printed and cursive. It took me a week to properly get to grips with printed and a little longer to get used to cursive. I will confess my own Russian cursive still mixes some elements of printed with the letter "zh" in particular, but no one's told me off for it yet!

In spite of all this, I feel immensely cool when I can speak correct Russian to a Russian person and they can a) understand me, and b) come up with an appropriate response that c) I can understand. Still working on that impeccable St Petersburg accent though ;) I picked Russian up when I started University 2 years ago so have a long way to go yet, but it's a work in progress. 

I'm in the Winter of my Life

The first snow arrived today, which can only mean one thing - NO MORE MOSQUITOES. Though I say that, I bet I'll now get bitten by some super mosquito with huge jaws that will come to me at night as I sleep, like a Spiderman villain. Well, that's my insomnia for the week established...

I warn you this is going to be a self indulgent post from here on, but hopefully it'll be an insight. I feel somehow compelled to write about it in a 21st Century "iGeneration" narcissistic kind of way, so I hope you will allow me this. A lot of you reading this may not have had the experience of a year abroad, yet an equal proportion may be considering taking one. I want to talk about my experiences in this post. I apologise if this is self centred, but I think a year abroad is actually a rather selfish thing to do - and a very good one at that. Who says it's bad to be selfish?! I am sure I speak for a lot of people in this post - the contributors to thirdyearabroad.com would substantiate this claim.

By all means go and make a cup of tea and put the telly on until I've finished, I won't be a minute.

I've been doing lots of thinking lately about how much this year abroad has helped me develop. I think I have grown exponentially as a person. I've found a confidence and inner peace I didn't know I could achieve and I am sure it is due to my being in St Petersburg, rather than the fact I am 21 in 3 months.
(Actually, what is WITH that?! I'll be OLD)


If the truth be told, I'm feeling my age a bit these days.

There is a fantastic word in Russian which means "young lady" - devushka - which I think sums up where I am in my life right now. I am not a child, I am not a zhenshina (mature woman), I am a devushka. I feel like the world is my oyster now that I have come this far and still have a long way to go - I still know nothing about the world, really, but I have more of a clue than I did before. But I can look back now and safely say that gone are the days of the shy girl who hadn't quite waved goodbye to her teenage years and was unsure how to conduct herself as a 20 year old woman. I was 20, for sure, but I didn't know how to act it. Mother Russia has taught me this much. She has taught me that I actually look and feel better with a bit of war paint on in the morning and that effort is always worth it. I have learned bravery and courage from her in the face of emotional turmoil.

I have discovered that a scarf is enough to change any outfit from drab to interesting and am hoping to pass "Scarf wearing for Anglichanki - Beginners" with flying colours before I leave (I have 2 very stylish Russian teachers, they put my scruffy student garb to shame).

I have made a life for myself in a foreign country, with a culture that is incredibly alien to that in which I was brought up. I have routine, a social circle, a local supermarket and personal favourite spots in the city. I make weekend plans. I have embraced my circumstances and grabbed the bull by the horns. I've become a regular at the local Stolovaya, where the staff and I are pretty much on first name terms and they know my daily preferred lunch order (mushroom soup and a samosa, pozhalusta). I've learned a sense of propriety - when to keep my mouth shut and when to open it. I've learned that outward appearances are no reflection of a person's inward self - remember the post about smiling? Yeah, that. I have developed a sense of responsibility - to myself and to others. I have learned values of respect - for myself and for others, culturally and personally. Most importantly, I have learned the value of all relationships - familial, social, personal and cultural.

I strongly believe that I will return from this first part of my year abroad a changed person - and a person changed for the better at that. If these first 9 weeks of my year are anything to go by, this will be one of the best years of my life, as well as one of the most challenging. I am looking forward to the rest of what it has to throw at me - I've been practising my catching skills ;)
(To my old school friends: Yes I know, SERIOUS practise needed right there!)

Again apologies for my self indulgence right there, but hey, it's a Friday!

In other news, I have become completely obsessed with Georgian food and flatbread. SOMEONE in England, please start making it as freshly and deliciously as the Russians! OH MY GOODNESS. Actually, all of English bread is of inferior quality to Russian/Azerbaijani/Georgian. I shall have to start making my own.

Где холодильник?

This week, my homework for grammar consisted of:


Вопрос: Где холодильник?

Ответ: Я повез его на ремонт

(Where is the fridge? I have taken it to be fixed).


I think this is wrong.

It should be:

Вопрос: Где холодильник?


Ответ: Холодильник здесь.. Hа самом деле я сижу в холодильнике. Он называется Санкт-Петербург.
(Where is the fridge? The fridge is is here. In fact, I am sitting in the fridge. It is called St Petersburg).

We are expecting snow soon. The first snows have already hit Petrozavodsk and Yaroslavl, neither of which is far from here. I am wearing a hat and scarf indoors and slept last night in said hat and my largest wool cardigan. I was still cold. I have resorted to holding onto the bottom of my porridge bowl in the morning after I have finished it in order to make use of the residual heat.

It is downhill from here.

Flamenco

Hello chaps,
Today will be a short, more lowbrow post as my philosophical phase has ended for now. I hear a collective sigh of relief.

So I went to what was advertised as a Flamenco show last night - a nice little something different.

I've noticed though in my 2 months of living here that a lot of Russian people have weird taste. It seems they start off doing something that would otherwise be really classy - then finish it off with something that leaves you shaking your head in mild despair at the tackiness of it all.  I present you this as case and proof. http://www.sadanduseless.com/2011/02/awfully-photoshopped-russian-wedding-pictures/

This evening was no exception.

I will spare you the boring bits, but basically I was left sniggering into my scarf at one choice moment when an overweight middle-aged Russian woman dressed as a Flamenco dancer (granted, she was very good), was whirling away in front of a low budget powerpoint presentation that comprised solely of pictures of oranges. Said powerpoint failed on a number of occasions during the evening.

One of the younger dancers kept crashing into the grand piano as they failed to keep formation in the final dance.

Oh Russia, you and your stagecraft!

(On a nerdy note though, it took place near the Finlandsky Vokzal, which is where Lenin made his speech in advance of the October Revolution. This excited me immensely)