Russian MTV memories

Sometimes you just feel stupid.

Dessie called me up from her mom's, where she and the kids are spending spring break (I myself have to work so I couldn't go), to ask, "Are you aware that you can see any Russian music video you want on YouTube?"

To which I had to answer, "Um, no, though now that you mention it, it's obvious that they would be."

So I went straight to the computer to look up a couple of music videos from back in 2003 when we first went to Kazakhstan -- one that I just really liked because I liked what they did with the story, and the other...well, I already told that story once (though not on this blog) but it's worth telling again. And sure enough, I found 'em right away.

First, the story. This is an excerpt from the story of our first adoption experience in Kazakhstan.

...Besides, I am typing while listening to my new Blyestyáschiye (Blis-YAH-shee) album, and while this particular girl-group does very good disco music (“disco” in the sense of “non-American nightclub”), it’s hardly conducive to serious reflection.

I’d been hearing one particular Blyestyaschiye song frequently on the radio and liked it quite a bit (you have to remember that I cheerfully admit to liking the first two Britney Spears albums). Then I wandered into Marina Yurievna’s living room, which is Kid Central pretty much 24/7, just in time to catch the music video for this particular song. Out of politeness to the kids I tried very hard to keep from lying down on the floor and laughing myself silly. Talk about an exercise in fantasy...the four twenty-something girls, who are admittedly drop-dead gorgeous when not punked up for their CD-cover art, were supposed to be stewardesses who had been hired by the Russian mafia to smuggle great big suitcases of money across some border, since security guards do not (at least in the MTV world) search stewardesses. I believe that “stewardesses” is an appropriate term in this context rather than the more politically correct “flight attendants,” because I don’t think the women who insist on being called “flight attendants” are in the habit of performing their duties in shorts that extend from their waist all the way down to, um, well, about halfway down their buttock cheeks. Nor do I think they generally strut through airports with their shirts completely unbuttoned in order to make sure that everyone knows that they prefer the black-bra look. (Plot hole the first of many: as if any girl that good-looking and built on those lines and (un)dressed like that, is going to make it through a checkpoint staffed by male security guards without being well and truly searched – “hey, sorry, but you’re an obvious security risk, babe.”)

By the end of the video the girls have used duplicate suitcases to double-cross the stereotypical mafia goons who were the drop recipients, leaving the goons to stand on the highway waving bras and panties around in baffled bewilderment while the girls and their four hunky boyfriends dance around with the money, for all the world as if the mafia don’t know who they are or where they live. The whole thing was so ludicrously silly it had to be a deliberate goof-off fantasy, one long high-spirited joke riff, especially since I don’t think the song itself has a thing to do with air travel or the mafia. I do admit, of course, that for all I know the black underwear might play a prominent role in the lyrics, since my Russian isn’t good enough to tell one way or the other.[1]

At any rate, none of the kids were laughing, so I politely refrained as well.

After seeing that video I had to get that song – because it really is a fun little dance-groove song, well-executed, and besides it had now been promoted to the status of trip memorabilium. But I didn’t know the name of the group or the name of the song and couldn’t remember any of the lyrics and only remembered two lines of the melody of the chorus. So I went back to Tsum, to the little shop where a cute and friendly and highly amused young lady had helped me select a couple of CD’s two or three days earlier, with no guidance other than, “Well, I like Ariána and want some more Russian or Kazakh music to take home.” The same girl was there and obviously remembered me, as she carefully suppressed a giggle as soon as she saw me coming. All I could tell her was, “I don’t know the song or the group, but the group is four girls and the song goes: bom, bom, bom-bom-bom-bom, bom, bom, bom-bom-bom-bom.” (Inside joke for Kim Sumner: just call me Ed. “You know, that song! YAY!”) You have no idea how impressed I was when she actually figured it out. Also it’s pretty cool that I got twenty songs, from a group that’s one of the hottest groups on the radio right now, on a perfectly good quality CD, for $3.50 or so. I’ve been desperately trying to locate the latest Shania Twain in hopes of saving myself thirteen big ones, figuring that since “Ka-Ching” is getting as much radio play here as any other song I’ve heard in the last four weeks, she’d be obtainable.[2] But so far I just get laughed at when I ask – even by the store that had a big selection of Leann Rimes albums. I gather that while they listen to lots of American music, there’s a certain randomness to the supply thereof. For example, numerous people by now have asked me whether I like this American artist or that American artist, and the name that has come up most often is Aerosmith. I’m not kidding. Aerosmith? They’re still making music? Okay. Didn’t know that. Guess you learn something new every day...

Here, at long last, I can present the video for "А я все летала" ("A ya fcye lyetala"), so that you can see whether or not my description was a good one.



Having bought that album, however, I found (unsurprisingly) that out of the twenty songs on it, some were better than the one that had caught my attention. A year or so later my Columbian friend Edgar Castro (no relation so far as he admits) asked me what I was listening to on my headphones as I coded away on my laptop next to his desk on the trading floor. "Russian salsa," I answered.

"You liar," he said with a grin. So I handed him the headphones and watched his eyes widen as he listened to "За четыре моря" ("Za chetirye morya"), at the end of which he exclaimed, "Hey, that's really good!" And off he went, shaking his head that Russians could do salsa like that. YouTube has disabled embedding on this one, so you'll have to go watch it here -- and you should go do that now. Very fun song and also you get a taste of Russian live pop concerts.

That's one thing I like about Russian pop music -- they pull in musical styles from all over the globe, providing much more musical variety than you get on (frankly pretty boring) American pop music stations. Here's a current big hit by the same group, called "Восточные сказки," with some Middle Eastern sound laid into the pop. (Picture quality is terrible -- probably video-camera'ed straight from a TV. But you can get the flavor of the music.)

And then here's my favorite Russian video from that first trip: Дискотека Авария ("Diskoteka Avariya," which I would translate as something like "Discoteque Wreck"), singing "Небо" ("Nyebo" = "The Sky"). I like the song, but I really like what they did with it in this somewhat silly, but surprisingly sweet little video.



[1] My Russian has gotten better, and I can now tell you that the song does not have anything to do, strictly speaking, with air travel or black underwear. However, it talks a lot about “flying around in the clouds” as a metaphor for being in love, which I suppose was the pretext for the airplane plot.
[2] It didn’t occur to me until later that the reason American music is so cheap, is because it’s all pirated.