 Listen to samples at Musicline. Click here ...‘If there was a ‘Nobel Prize for Russian Folklore’ the first person this award should go to would be Sergey Starostin’.
Sergey Starostin is a musician, a tireless explorer, a talented master. He is a brilliant Russian folk and jazz musician, singer and multi-instrumentalist. He’s been collecting and studying Russian folk songs for many years now – going around on his folklore expeditions he has gathered and preserved almost 3000 songs. Thus he is not simply a performer but also a serious explorer of the folklore who sees a number of phenomena from his own unique perspective. As a musician Starostin manages to combine amazingly the traditional approach to studying and performing folklore songs with the modern and sometimes vanguard music trends. He is the author of a number of music projects, and was also nominated for the World Music
Awards 2003, bestowed annually by the BBC to the most fascinating world musicians working in the area of ethnic music.
Sergey Nikolaevich Starostin was born in Moscow in 1956. His first encounters with the roots of Russian culture came about thanks to his family. His parents were people of ‘the generation that
used to leave the villages looking for new opportunities in the city’ yet he was brought up in a family environment where Russian folklore traditions were well remembered and preserved. Sergey Starostin used to sing from early childhood, he sang in a boy’s choir. In 1981 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied clarinet.
Sergey Starostin started studying the Russian folklore traditions while he was still a university student.
After finishing the first year in University he went on an Ethnologic expedition in the Ryazan area where he heard the singing of an elderly local village woman – she had the amazing ability to not
simply sing but rather, as the theoreticians would say, create an astonishing ‘musical image of the song’. Sergei was amazed not simply by the timbre of her voice which had a typical folklore
and very natural sound but also by the fact that even not having the suitable music education she could sing in such a persuasive and ‘professional’ manner.
So for the following four years Sergey Starostin worked with the folklore ensemble of the Conservatory and after the compulsory army service he went back to Conservatory to work in the Folklore
laboratory. His duties there involved preserving, describing and classifying the data collected at the folklore expeditions. Naturally, he himself traveled around many villages too. Thus apart from
his interest in singing Sergey Starostin also developed an interest in folklore wind instruments. These were already scarce at the time. Yet Sergey Starostin was lucky. He managed to find and bring back to life a number of folklore instruments that were an artifact: the horn of the Tver area that he plays today, the kalyuka – an overtone flute, gusle (a bowed string instrument) and a number of others. Sergey Starostin's nickname Grandpa originated from his image – he has a grayish beard and blue eyes sparkling with the love for the traditional musical instruments – zhaleika, kalyuka, low wistle, pyzhatka, gusle and flute.
In the process of finding and bringing back to life these folklore instruments, which had acquired the status of artifacts, Sergei noticed that playing those instruments so as to make music flow
was not easy at all. He spent five years studying how to play the horn before he ventured to make a duet with a shepherd. After he acquired some knowledge and experience Sergey Starostin started
playing with a number of folklore ensembles including Bylina, Slavici and others. He’s been
experimenting with the band Alliance who mixed rock music with folklore rhythms and harmonies.
This is when he started collaborating with the famous Norwegian vocalist Mary Boine who was a famous world music singer. As a vocalist and instrumentalist Sergey Starostin has had the chance to work also with the renowned Armenian musician Djivan Gasparyan (who plays the duduk), Inna Jelannaya, the rock musician Leonid Fedorov (who played previously with the rock band AuctIon), the Church-slavonic choir Sirin, Olga Arefevaya. He participated in the projects of the Moscow Art Trio (Sergey Starostin, Mikhail Alperin and Arkadijh Shilkloper), played with Huun-Huur-Tu, Volkov Trio, The Bulgarian Voices ANGELITE and others.
Since 1987 Sergey Starostin has been working in the radio without ever interrupting his career as a musician. He had his own radio show that presented Russian traditional culture. In the years
between 1991 and 1998 he worked in television where he was the main director of a TV show called ‘World village’.
Today Sergey Starostin has accumulated a huge amount of materials and he thinks it’s time that he shares them with a larger audience since they represent a very important part of Russian
traditions and culture as well as an important piece of people’s consciousness. Unfortunately, the musician notes, few people actually know this tradition well. His greatest wish is to share his treasured songs with the largest possible audience.
‘We are incredibly rich yet we feel content with the poor and pitiful dross we encounter in our everyday lives since it represents what is
fashionable. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not claim that this primitive pop-music should be superseded by folklore all over the radio and TV shows. This is impossible and unnecessary. I just believe that every type of music, be it jazz, rock, classical music or folklore should have its own space. The audience, especially young listeners, should know that there are different types of music that do not resemble what they are used to listening. Only after they know this they can choose knowingly, whatever is close to their hearts.’
Starostin is rightfully considered not simply a collector but a serious explorer and an expert in authentic Russian culture. His opinions on a number of folklore phenomena are extremely
interesting and are based on his extensive work in this area. Let’s take as an example the original music genre of the ballad. 90% of these songs are sad and sometimes dreadful. In Sergey’s opinion the reason for this is not simply the heavy beat and the phonetics, the chanting
sound of the Russian language, but actually the fact that traditional songs were created so as to prevent these dreadful and sad events the song related from happening in real life. This was a magic ritual, in a way.
The other musicians of the project:
Sergei Klewenski - multi-instrumentalist, master of morethan a dozen of the most exotic wind instruments. According to numerous critics, Sergei Klewenski is one of the most
interesting modern artists on a contemporary ethnic music scene in Russia. Sergey successfully collaborated with many record labels and filmmakers and he shared the stage with many well known Russian and foreign artists. His most known project in the west were
„The Farlanders".
Taisia Krasnopewtseva and Olga Krasnopewtseva - young and talent professional folksingers. There repertoire includes a great number of original and truly traditional songs collected in different parts of the country (during ethnographic expeditions as participants of the well-knownRussian folk-group Veretenze) and adopted directly from local popular folk artists.
Sergey Starostin - vocals, gusli, rojok
Sergei Klewenski - clarinet, woodwinds
Taisia Krasnopewtseva - vocals, hurdy-gurdy
Olga Krasnopewtseva - vocals
All participants of this project are well-known and already self proven musicians on Russian professional ethno music scene.
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