Sold! (Yanka Dyagileva, 1989)

Янка (Яна) Дягилева / Yanka (Yana) Dyagileva (1966-1991) is now considered part of the untold history of punk music during the last decades of the Soviet Union; yet, everything would oversimplify her deeply personal life. Born in the industrial corpse of Novosibirsk, Siberia: close to the center of the at the time immense URSS. Moscow, endlessly far away. A child striving amid the snow, who kept to herself, learning piano and then guitar, filling her notebooks with now lost poetry; growing up in a one-store wooden house during the desintegration of an entire era. Gloomy lessons on a local engineering institute while her mother fought against cancer. Coping with such curcumstances, the musically oriented teen soon had to discover the world of underground and rebellious music taking place, known as magnitizdat (hand-passed magnetic tapes, clandestine recordings and bootlegs fighting censorship). Since undisclosed property of tape recorders was allowed, magnitizdat was deemed way less dangerous than samizdat, illegal printing of zines, leaflets and censored books. Nevertheless, the conservative URSS did not allowed political themes in popular modern music, at the time most ephitomized by Ala Pugachova. Punk in particular, deemed anarchistic, was therefore strictly banned; but unlike Moscow, Siberia was vast and hard to monitorize. In 1985, at a house show in Novosibirsk, Yanka met legendary punk-folk singer Sasha Bashlachev, and this friendship both changed her life and drew her deeper into the Russian rock underground scene.

After her mother's death in 1986, Yanka was fully propelled into the punk scene, and only year later she leaves the city along with her lover Igor Letov, founder of the legendary Grazhdanskaya Oborona [Civil Defense] band, taking the railroad to Omsk. The plan did not work alright, since the local Department for Internal Affairs of the big city was way more scrupulous, and targeted Letov on the spot. Both had to flee Omsk and seek refuge in rural Siberia, without pocket money or clothing. This year of 1987 was profoundly transformative to 21 year old Yanka. The former loner girl caught herself living on a day-to-day basis, performing live on streets and corners in the midst of winter. Letov vividly recalls that period of hardship and creativity:

We travelled the whole country, lived with hippies, sang songs on the street, ate whatever God provided, stole food from the markets (...) lived on less than 40 cents a day, eating in municipal cafeterias and sleeping in basements, abandoned train cars, and attics.

Thus was the beginning of Yanka's career, which was to span just 4 years. While criscrossing the Soviet Union by train, she played a concert in 1988 in Tymen, a bigger one in Leningrad, and a myriad more; not in glamorous stages but rather ''in people’s apartments, dormitories, and the occasional local House of Culture''. She recorded whenever she had the occasion, and the occasion was rare indeed; none of her tracks were commercially released during her lifetime, but the mouth-to-ear of the magnitizdat gave her a deserved reach, becoming an emerging figure within the underground rock scene of the URSS. This album, Продано! [Sold!] dates from the Leningrad era, and was recorded on the apartment of their first producer, Sergei Firsov (who knew just enough of music recording so as to make the album possible in the face of all technical limitations). Some of Yanka's live footage can be found on the internet, as her fame grew during these last years of the 90's. Still, something was amiss: the unraveling of the Soviet Union for all to see, and Yanka's personal tragedy along with it. Her musical mentor and friend Sasha Bashlachev, committed suicide in 1988, and after the recording of Sold! her relationship with Letov, never well-established, fell apart.

1990 to 1991 was Yanka's last year in this world. After a last recording she took the last train, and moved back to Novosibirsk, to the wooden house on Yadrinsovskaya Street where she had spent her childhood, becoming increasingly isolated and turning down invitations to perform. On May 9th, 1991, Yanka disappeared while taking a walk near her father’s summer home. It is believed that she drowned in the nearby Inya River; she was 24 years old. While the forensic examination stipulated an accidental drawning, injuries in the skull caused some to suspect of murder. Her isolation, the death of her stepbrother and some farewell postcards pointed to a more likely suicide, jumping to the icy river. Along with Yanka, December of that same year, the Soviet Union also died.

Lets talk about her music. Yanka's unique style blends together the impossible: Siberian punk, traditional Russian folk, Velvet Underground-like western rock. The ballads and lullabies of traditional music are poignant in her voice, and hold a cosmic sadness which permeates her entire legacy: twenty-nine original songs, come covers, and a poetry book. As Alina Simone (who made a tribute album of Yanka's music) states:

Her songs are ironic tangles of communist slogans, Russian fairy tales, Soviet army anthems, and apocalyptic impressions of a faded nation. They conjure the low ceilings and teacup-strewn kitchen tables of shabby Khrushchevkas. These songs are postcards of Yanka’s inner state, deeply personal and perhaps, by definition, untranslatable.

Granted, there is no need of understanding russian to enjoy her songs, minimalistic as they are: a strong, unrestrained voice along with a rythmic guitar can rarely be this enchanting. Power chords and structure are the punk mark of the hybrid, which remains as lyrical as aggressive. The powerful rush indeed conveys a permanent battle against depression; there is rage as well as contemplation.

The tracklist is perhaps the most solid of her recordings. As not all songs have been translated, I'll skip some tracks, though. It opens with the fantastic На чёрный день, which closely resembles traditional chanting and rythm: it only lacks a hand drum to be a Siberian song. As much as it iterates its structure its surprisingly pleasant. Skipping to Печаль моя светла [My Sorrow Is Luminous], was the theme that introduced me to Yanka. This short track, barely 1 minute and a half, was translated and used on Adam Curtis's Hypernormalisation, during an account of the last years of the Soviet Union and its hopelessness (juvenile detention centers, deserted khrushchevka buildings). Unexpectedly, Massive Attack also did a live cover. Short at it is, it pierces deeply and has an intrincate and beautiful guitar pattern. Рижская combines urgency with a relentless tell-tale-like singing. Similar to the first track, it becames way faster all in all.

От большого ума [From Greater Knowledge] might in fact be my favorite track; majestic and melancholic, it relies on the same austerity of voice and guitar as the rest of the tracks. Yet, Yanka's voice flies high here, as if shouting to the grey siberian sky; juzging for the various covers, it particulary shimmers among her songs. Lastly, Деклассированным элементам is a duet, with a low-pitched male singer I yet have to identify. Energetic, it ends the album with perhaps an uplifter tone. Given the simplicity of the instrumentation, the protagonist of Yanka's music is (exception made of her material with Grazhdanskaya Oborona) her solemn, powerful voice, filled with the gravitas of a youthful spirit too soon gone.