Booklung

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It was tough choosing this week's song. Yanka Dyagileva's discography is sadly too brief, and most of them are equal contenders to represent her music, not to mention full of her characteristic cynicism and despair. Since her songs never saw official release under her supervision or awareness, there's a layer of doubt overlying them too.

She was a poet as well as a lyricist. In addition to the 29 songs she recorded in her lifetime, she also has a broader corpus of written poetry available. So it's not like, a lost cause or anything when it comes to understanding her. More that one cannot help but wonder, just sometimes, what it'd have been like had she the time to put more of them to melodies. Had she still been alive. Though much of the company she kept aren't alive any more, either.

But let's start from the beginning. Yanka Dyagileva (1966 - 1991) was a punk musician, poet, and a shooting star of the Siberian underground music scene; gone too soon, but burned very bright, exceptionally so for the five (!!) years she was active. You would know her if you're at all familiar with Гражданская Оборона (or any of Yegor Letov's projects, really) or Alexander Bashlachev (1960 - 1988), as she was friends with both of them, and their careers are inextricably entwined together in both life and death.

Bashlachev came first. The two first met at a kvartirnik (apartment concert) in late 1985. I haven't covered Bashlachev during this project and won't be able to, as much of his lyrics are very difficult for me to interpret: the best-known of them all, 'Время колокольчиков' ('The Time of the Little Bells' or 'The Time of the Bellflowers'), is so layered with meaning that I'm not sure I get it after looking up its translations and interpretations. But among Russian musicians of this period he is considered highly influential, and his imagery deeply evocative, and Dyagileva was enchanted with his creative vision. They were friends and confidants until 1988, when Bashlachev died after falling out of his apartment window. Most believe he committed suicide; some friends and family, however, have denied the possibility. Dyagileva herself would be found dead under similarly bizarre circumstances three years later, and the same questions and denials sprang up then as well.

Her poetry was never the happy sort, at least as far as I have read, but it seems the death of Bashlachev was the event that pushed her further into the darkness. Her musical landscape is highly depressive, dominated by feelings of grief and death. Her imagery is taken directly from the dreary everyday of Soviet life, her motivation a profound disillusionment of the society she was living in. In that worldview, she was joined by Yegor Letov, whom she'd met at the Novosibirsk Rock Festival of 1987.

This is the same festival that made him a fugitive, by the way, as briefly mentioned in his entry (Week 39). That was the first time Гражданская Оборона got to play at an official event, and it lasted less than half an hour, as the band's playstyle and lyrics enraged the festival organizers and the audience. (There's a full recording preserved of this performance, if you want to listen to it.) ГрОб were accused of being fascists, of being mentally ill and disruptive, and not long after that the organizers sought to put Letov back into the psychiatric hospital (excerpted from this interview article with Letov, 1989):

Написал кто-то из организаторов, какие-то комсомольцы. Бумага имела хождение в Омске: вызывали всех подряд. Меня сразу же вызвали в психушку и решили там оставить. Т.е. вызвали, сказали что-то про новосибирский фестиваль и добавили, что «сейчас за тобой санитары придут и все». И пошли за санитарами. Тут я дверь открыл и убежал. Сразу «скорая помощь» на дом приехала — меня забирать. У меня с собой было сорок рублей и сумка со свитером... На сорок рублей я купил билет на поезд до Москвы и уехал. В бегах был три или четыре месяца. Начался розыск — это был как раз 1987-й год, все лето...

[Someone from the organizers wrote back, this person from the Komsomol. The paper [detailing ГрОб's doings] was circulated all around Omsk and everyone was summoned. At once they called me to the psych ward, and decided to keep me there. So they contacted me, said something about the festival in Novosibirsk, and added: "Now the orderlies will come for you; that is all." They went for the orderlies, I opened the door and ran away; immediately afterwards, an ambulance came to my house to pick me up. I had forty rubles and a bag with a sweater on me... With those forty rubles I bought a train ticket to Moscow, and I got out of there. I was on the run for three or four months. A search for me began - this was in 1987, it lasted all summer...]

Yanka Dyagileva was a witness to those events. Letov trekked almost 4500km around Russia during his fugitive era, lasting until the winter of 1987; she accompanied him through this time, becoming his partner in the process. Letov was undoubtedly a great influence on her musical development - she toured and recorded with ГрОб, and most of the songs of her discography were recorded in Letov's studio in Omsk - but at the same time, this is where the previously-mentioned layer of doubt comes in. How far did his influence bleed in? Letov was a highly dominating figure across all of his projects, everything he was involved in sounds like him at some point. Dyagileva was no longer alive to speak for herself when her songs saw official release. What could she have achieved, had she been around long enough to take on other influences, spread her wings further, lived longer in a broader sphere of existence?

None of these questions have any answers. Dyagileva was quite avoidant of interviews or making appearances before a large audience, so her solo public performances are rather few and far between. A punk festival in Tyumen, 1988, then another large concert the year after. A scattering of appearances in 1990, then never again. She died in May 1991 after a family member's funeral, claiming to be stepping out for a cigarette but never returning from the walk. Eight days after her disappearance her body was found in the River Inya, presumably drowned and carried down by the current. It is not known when she died, nor why she died - whether it was suicide, murder, or a simple accident, nothing is known.

It's quite difficult for me to talk about Yanka Dyagileva. Her legacy has become many times longer than she was ever active - I mean, like, this woman would be my mother's age if she was still alive. She's one of the first artists I thought of translating for during this project, and her song 'Я стервенею' ('I'm Becoming a Bitch') is one of the first Russian songs I translated, years ago. I'm eternally puzzled by her short life and the powerful songs she left behind, and again by just how few of them there are, and the never-ending anger and sadness that remain long after the music fades away.