Anyone who wants to present Russian music cannot ignore Zemfira. Popular and mainstream – millions of records sold – but also distinctly idiosyncratic. The music is usually accessible (we categorize it under Pop), but the attitude is rock.
VERBS
Language
Verbs work for those who want to make sentences. There - work and make, there you already have two. And try to make Russian out of that sentence if you if you don’t know работать or делать. So work, also on your vocabulary.
Raw Anti-Putin punk from
Nizhny Novgorod /
Нижний Новгород. Loosely based on ‘Maggie’ by The Exploited.
The Netherlands holds a unique place in the Russian imagination. This is how our country, and we, are viewed through Russian eyes.
The Retuses 3x
Music
From the green city of
Zelenograd /
Зеленоград. Dreamy indie-folk with a melancholic undertone. Created by
Mikhail Rodionov (1992).
Learning Russian with News
Language
Even with bad news there is good news: there is a lot to learn from it. Russian news articles are excellent teaching material, even for the more advanced student.
An interview becomes legendary when it gets its own page on
Wikipedia. On February 6, 2024, Tucker Carlson spoke with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. The report (127 minutes) offers a good, or at least broad, opportunity to hear the Russian perspective on the war against Ukraine.
The alarm blares (Ревёт тревога), the road awaits (ждёт дорога). They are many (Их немало), we are few (нас немного). We are in an unjust world (Мы в несправедливом мире) tin wolves in the shooting range (Жестяные волки в тире).
SIXTH NOUN: LOCATIVE/PREPOSITIONAL
Language
The sixth noun, in Russian предложный падеж, is for most students the first one they learn. The reason is simple: the sixth grammatical case itself is.
Offret 3x
Music
The word offret is Swedish and means ‘sacrifice’; the band Offret is Russian and makes heavy music. The link between the word and the band: a
1986 film in Swedish by the Russian Andrei Tarkovsky.
GOPNIK AND THE SLAV SQUAT
Country
What we would call ’tokkies’ or ‘gabbers’, and what elsewhere might be referred to as white trash or hooligans – in Russia, these are called gopniki. Folk culture in a tracksuit.
OPERATION WAR
Language
And then it became war. Or should we say began the special military operation. On
February 24 2022 Russian troops entered Ukraine. It was allowed
neither war nor invasion be called, but it was akin to both.
До свиданья, дорогая!
Music
A band from Saint Petersburg that makes a kind of post-punk/indie-pop. Not for long yet, so not much material yet. However, they already have a few very successful tracks with original music videos. До свиданья, дорогая is the
Russian title for the film
The Goodbye Girl (1977), but it has nothing to do with it.
Perfective and imperfective
Language
This often comes as a setback for students of Russian: of (almost) every Russian verb there are two. Which do mean approximately the same thing, but express very different things. So you need to know both, and of both learn the conjugations.
Manizha 3x
Music
With
Russian Woman, Russia is sending singer
Manizha (=
Манижа Сангин, 1991) to the
Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam (May 18-22). A song with a message, though not everyone is happy with it.
Photo: Igor Mukhin
Country
Since the age of sixteen, Игорь Мухин (1961) has been taking photographs. Armed with a
Смена-8М camera, he started his journey. So, when he found himself among artists and musicians in the 1980s, he already had a trained eye – and a better camera. Mukhin (sometimes Moukhin) witnessed major changes and began documenting them.
Йорш (Yorsh) 3x
Music
We are punk rock, our life is scars, the state is the main enemy: Йорш (or Yorsh) in three parts, from 2010 to 2020. Ёрш is
beer with vodka and the old name. Punk from
Podolsk (=
Подольск), since 2006.
Wrong Cyrillic
Language
Making mistakes in Cyrillic is no big deal. Everyone does. But wrong Cyrillic, that’s the biggest mistake you can make. And the worst thing you can do with that noble Cyrillic can do.
Samizdat (Down with Big Tech)
Country
Freedom of speech is decreasing everywhere, though the reasons vary by region. Meanwhile, Big Tech’s power is growing, along with its interference. In this new era, a nearly forgotten Soviet answer is reemerging: samizdat, the underground DIY press and distribution network.
25/17 3x
Music
Pop (or light rap) that you can hear 24/7. Figuratively speaking, of course. Formerly (until 2009) known as Иезекииль 25:17 – named after the Bible verse in
Ezekiel (=
Иезекииль), best known for being recited by
Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (1994).
To emphasize one more time that - and why - it is useful and important to to know where the
emphasis added in Russian falls. And how that knowledge helps you, in both the spelling of the word крокодил (crocodile) and the pronunciation of names such as Tolstoy.
Three from Дурной Вкус (Durnoy Vkus), which means bad taste (see
synonyms,
Reverso, and
Akademik). It is also the
Russian title of
Bad Taste (1987), the debut film by
Peter Jackson. A band from Saint Petersburg, the music is tasty, but a bit on the cold side.
Every country has a flag and a coat of arms. The Netherlands has a lion, France has a rooster, New Zealand has a kiwi, and the United States has a bald eagle. In Russia, it’s an eagle with two heads and three crowns, and a man on a horse who has just killed a dragon with a spear.
Seven
deadly sins – ingrained in human nature, a classic theme in art. From
Jheronimus Bosch (or maybe
not) to
Jan Smit (definitely not). In the vast space between the two, the searching soul may find Gospod. Священный металл, holy metal – it would be a sin not to pass on such a discovery.
Stress (Ударение)
Language
One of the
8 common mistakes every Russian language learner makes according to Russia Beyond (2018). Including a “Word of warning: It takes a VERY long time to get accustomed to the stresses on Russian words At times, you’ll be confronted with a new word and have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it.’ No stress: this is going to help, and will speed things up.
In the past, Владимир Золотухин (Vladimir Zolotukhin, 1990) sang and played in
Cardio Beat, which even participated in
X Factor (2015). But he performs best alone (now under the name
Zoloto since then). And the more limited the resources you give him, the better the work he returns with.
When you see the current Russian flag, it’s easy to also think of the Dutch one. This puts you immediately on the right track about the origin of the Russian tricolor: the white-blue-red of the Russian Federation directly stems from the red-white-blue of the Netherlands.
From now on, call it
Belarus or just keep saying White Russia – most Belarusians currently won’t care much about how their country is called in some faraway land. One day, it will be freed from
Lukashenko, but it’s still tied to Russia, both geographically and linguistically.
