![[BULAT OKUDZHAVA IN 1969-1970]](1969-70novgod.jpg)
First songs of Bulat Okudzhava were not published in the homeland of the poet, but in Krakow, Poland, in 1970, the collection of 'Bulat Okudzawa, 20 piosenek na glos i gitare' or 'Bulat Okudzhava, 20 Songs for Voice and Guitar' came out. However, the collection compilers, Dabrowsky, Woroszylski et al., apparently wished to create a "stage" version of Okudzhava's songs, and the author's melodies and accompaniments were substantially rearranged, straying rather far from the original. So, the first musical edition of original Bulat Okudzhava's songs appeared in America.In any case - what prevented it from being published in the Soviet Union? After all, somehwere at the end of the 60s the state publishing house "Muzyka", in Mozcow, agreed to print a small collection of Bulat Okudzhava's songs. It was supposed to have been the first edition of pieces representative of a new genre, founded by Okudzhava about ten years earlier; a genre which didn't have an appropriate, generally accepted name. Since, most of the lyrics in the collection had already appear in print, so from the verbal ideological standpoint the publishing house "Muzyka" was safely insured from risk. Strange as it may seem, the book fell trhough not on account of the lyrics, but because of the music. Okudzhava's melodies were a source of doubt and anxiety to the administration of the publishing house. To publish Okudzhava's poems the way they were performed by the author - that is, with the natural combination of his melodies and guitar accompanimet - meant to recognize offically a rather doubtful, unofficial genre, which appeared in a scandalous form: a form, which was not planned anywhere or approved by anyone, which was outside any of the norms and rules in accordance with which songs are composed, selected and distributed in the Soviet Union. So, The manuscript safely passed editorial proofreading, but as it turned out, it ended up not on the printing press but in the desk of K. A. Fortunatov, the director of the publishing house, where it remained for several years.
![[PORTRAIT OF BULAT OKUDZHAVA]](portretbl.jpg)
Before Okudzhava, the Soviet song industry had virtually no competition from within the country. The state monopoly of songs seemed unshakable. Suddenly it was discovered that one person could compose a song and make it famous, without the Union of Composers, with its creativity sections and department of propaganda, without the help of popular singers, choirs and orchestras, without publishing houses, radio and television, film and record companies, editors and censors. It turned out that a talented poet, who had never had a lesson in musical composition, singing or guitar playing, possessing only native musicality, could make himself heard as no one had been heard in Russia for a long time. And that poet was Bulat Okudzhava.At first glance his songs are similar in content to the majority of the songs permitted by the authorites. The poet never suspected that the reaction to this foray into the sphere of song would be so sharp and decisive. The reaction was completely different on the part of those who had no professional ties to the Soviet song or Soviet ideology. Okudzhava's songs found a much more receptive audience. People found in them what they had longed for for more than a decade. They were songs full of vitality and deep meaning, songs consisting not of gaudy melodies but of words written by a great poet who had something to say to his contemporaries.
These songs, in spite of their romantic conventionalities, revealed an aura of the truth, an understanding of human fate, and a firm, uncompromising moral position. They brought to mind the absolute value of each human life and the right of every person to be himself; they celebrated kindness and freedom, love and hope; laughed at stupidity, disdained falsehood and rejected violence.
![[BULAT OKUDZHAVA AT HOME, 1963]](at_home1963.jpg)
It is interesting that, being primarily verses belonging more to poetry than to music, Okudzhava' songs distinguished themselves against the background for mass-produced Soviet songs first by their music, their melodies. We sensed and valued the new quality and originality of tone, it seems, even before we had time to listen carefully and ponder the meaning of the lyrics. When Okudzhava began to sing - in his restrained, subtly ironic manner, the falseness and monotony of the tonal atmosphere in which we had lived for years became apparent. We realized how overdone and false our cantatas and songs, the speeches of our orators and superiors, and the voices of our announcers and actors sounded.Okudzhava's songs revived a human quality and a natural simplicity of tone which has long been inherent in Russian speech, song and poetry. The process of renewing the tone and of humanizing the melodics of speech touched, at that time (the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s), many spheres of Russian culture. Prepared in the sphere of folklore by songs of labour camps, which were spread around the country after the death of Stalin, by songs of students, campers, and mountainers, this process appeared most strongly in the works of poet singers (Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksandr Galich, Vladimir Vysotsky, Novella Matveeva and others), also in theater and film. Reform of the theatrical tone began with Alexandr Volodin's play, "Factory Girl", performed in 1956.
![[BULAT OKUDZHAVA 1961-1962]](1961_1962_year_photo.jpg)
The melodies are traditional, the three-to-five chord harmony is modest, the style of the guitar accompaniment simple and unpretentious, yet in spite of all this the music in Okudzhava's songs is not just a kind of neutral background, not simply a means of transmitting the message of poetry to the listener or an amplifier of its emotional impact. It performs a more precise and complicated job. The music often acts as a flexible and sensitive partner of the poetic word - it surrounds it with a special emotional atmosphere. The music can elevate or romanticize the word's sound, or with the help of an ironic tone, balance and temper excessive feeling which would burst out of the poem. It enriches the word with new colour, gives rise to additional shades of meaning, and forms its own kind of counterpoint to the movement of the poem, achieving a certain verbally-transcendent semantic plan. The music combines with the word in an intricate, whimsical game, advancing both as a helper and as a rival; it excites the imagination of the listener, alluding to that which is not fully said in the poem, to implications harboured between the lines.Performers of Okudzhava's songs should be advised not to approach the written notation as a rigid dogma. It should be viewed as a more or less general scheme, permitting various individual interpretations. It is possible to vary the tempo, the rhythmic pattern, the melodic line, the harmony, or the style of guitar accompaniment. A true understanding of Okudzhava's poetry, and a sense of its style and the author's intonation, along with personal taste - all these will help the performer to recognize the bounds of permissibility in improvising and varying the songs.
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