I’ve been a huge fan of the five-member Okean Elzy (their name means “Elzy’s Ocean”) since I first got to Ukraine. They are one of the few groups that sing in Ukrainian and not Russian, and listening to their music helped me out greatly during training. Nowadays they are a welcome respite on the airwaves, muscling in as they do between Euro-techno and Russian pop.
Where we were on the floor, with no zoom
Okean Elzy falls into no particular genre. The only musical tradition Ukraine has is folk music, played on pipes and accordions. This seems to have freed up Okean Elzy to try every type of song they wanted: one may be bluesy, another hard rock, one is straight funk with a Red Hot Chili Peppers-style rap, and another draws too much from the 80s. Where they really come to the fore, though, is on the power ballad. Lyrics to two of them are at the end of this blog.
Their lyrics are amazing. Ukraine has a love affair with poetry. There are statues in my town not to generals or politicians but to poets: Taras Shevchenko and Alexander Pushkin (well, there is a Lenin statue. A Ukrainian city without one is like an American city without a Wal-Mart). Okean Elzy’s lyrics reflect this poetic tradition and are full of interesting imagery.
Singer Svyatoslav Vakarchook. The zoom on my video camera rocks!
Unfortunately, the lyrics end up sounding stilted in English despite being so powerful in Ukrainian. Ukrainian is a musical language. The complexities of its grammar, it took me a long time to realize, are because it’s so concerned with how things sound. Every word changes to sound good with every other word. Had early Slavs taken a crack at modern English, they might have decided that “Youra beautifula girla” sounded more musical (or, at least, more like a retarded Italian) than “Your beautiful girl”, hence “Tvoya kracnaya divchina” is the translation, with both “your” and “beautiful” changing to fit with “girl”. “Your beautiful boy” would be “Tovoyee kracnee holopsee”.
It used to frustrate me that there were 24 forms of “you(r)” and that I had to memorize when each was used. What I finally understood, though, was that if I just started lining up sounds, I usually found that I was grammatically correct. Possibly it should have been taught to us that way, rather than presenting us with what linguists found when they decided to make an organized picture of the language.
Guitarist Pavlo Goodimov
In any case, the musicality of the language, the imagery of the words and the freedom of the music has made Okean Elzy one of my favorite bands. It was a great way to celebrate one year in Ukraine by paying $12 to get in, sneaking past the guards being mobbed by ticket-waving fans so that we could get onto the floor and then muscling our way to the front. Although Okean Elzy would be playing in Zhytomyr in only four days, it was worth the trip to Kyiv because you have to sit in Zhytomyr's theatre. To be on the floor, amongst the dancing singing, crowd, was definitely worth it. The zoom on my camera took care of the rest.
If you want to hear Okean Elzy’s music, an English website provides samples and sells albums.
http://www.umka.com.ua
And here are a couple of lyric translations (by me, so they may not be completely accurate):
[I don’t know the name of this song. It was song at the concert and I got it on video and have been listening to it repeatedly because it’s f’ing fantastic]
Prosto meni tak hochetsya boodo tam de ee ti
It’s just that I so want to be where you are
tak hochetsya shivite tebe polonee
So want to live for you, a prisoner
Ee bachete yak ytakyoot vid mene snih v tovoyee dolonee
And to see how my dreams escape from me into your hands
[Bez boyu (Without a Fight)]
Ya nalyyu sobi, ya nalyyu tobi vyna. A hochesh iz medom?
I pour to myself, I pour to you wine. Or do you want [me] with honey?
Hto ty ye? - Ty vzyala moye zhyttya i ne viddala
Who are you? You took my life and didn’t return it.
Hto ty ye? - Ty vypyla moyu krov i p'yanoyu vpala
Who are you? You drank my blood and fell drunk to the floor
Tvoyi ochi, klychut', hochut' mene vedut' za soboyu
Your eyes, they call, they want me. They see into myself.
Hto ty ye? Y kym by ne bula ty
Who are you at whom there was not you?
[Screamed] Ya ne zdamsya bez boyu!
I will not give up without a fight