Vadim Astrakhan brings Vysotsky back to Russkiy Mir

   On January 28, 2012 the "Russkiy Mir" Center in Washington, DC celebrated Vladimir Vysotsky's birthday by hosting a spectacular performance by Vadim Astrakhan. This young Russian-American singer presented over a dozen of his original translations of Vladimir Vysotsky songs and poems to an audience of Russophiles and Vysotsky-fans. His translations and performance represented a spicy combination that demonstrated a sincere respect for the literary and musical authenticity of Vysotsky’s texts, while at the same time, lending a very modern (almost rocky!) overtone to the performance. Vadim believes that the extremely contextual lyrics by the prominent Russian bard demand the equally deep knowledge of the “other” culture from anyone who dares to translate Vysotsky. In this sense, Mr. Astrakhan himself is obviously an appropriate “stalker” between the two realms, as he had grown up with equal exposure to both Russian and American cultures.

   Vadim’s performance ended with a vibrant question-and-answer session, and was effectively concluded with a recitation of his newly translated Vysotsky poem («И снизу лёд, и сверху...»), which is one of the poet’s most programmatic and challenging masterpieces.

See the photo-album of this performance HERE.
Watch the video clip with Vadim's interpretation of Vysotsky's "Спасите наши души".  

   And a final piece of good news… Upon setting-off for his next trip to California, Vadim made a generous donation to our Workshop by adding several copies of his recently released CD to our awards-fund! Hooray! Now we can acknowledge several more participants of the Workshop in even more categories!

   Finally, Vadim Astrakhan has kindly shared his advice for beginning Vysotsky translators; you may read it on our new blog page «Стана советов». We are confident that you will find it very helpful!

(The next post by another experienced Vysotsky translator is soon to come. Keep an eye on our postings!)