From the concert “Love Lines: A Tribute to Joe Maneri”. Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston, 15 September 2011.

* * *

December 13, 2011

The conservatory is like an incubator for your music. Transitioning to the outside world can be scary and complicated. To complicate things further, not one of us has been handed the same deck of cards. But I know that each of you can survive as a musician. And I you can expect more than survival: you can set up a life that allows you to thrive as an artist. With that goal in mind, here are some essential tools.

1. Untangle money from music. While you’re in school, the relationship between music and money is suspended. When you get out, it can get complicated, fast. Without oversimplifying things, remember that money is simply a tool that allows you the time and materials to pursue your art to the fullest extent. Other than that, it has little to do with music itself.

2. Seek out real-life career models. Most musicians do not support themselves exclusively from performance. We are bombarded with stories about either end of the spectrum – about people making it big, or struggling mightily – but we don’t often hear about musicians who are actually getting by. Poverty is not a necessary condition of for great art, nor is it an inevitable consequence of a life in music. Most musicians I know are doing more or less OK. Find some of these people and see how they’re doing it.

3. Nothing you do right now is going to make or break your career. You have time to figure things out. The important thing is to face up to the reality of your own set of options and to figure out a way to build a life that has the time, space and context for you to keep developing your music. Ask yourself, “What is the best way I can fund the musical life I want to have?”

4. Don’t compare yourself to others. Each of us gets handed a different deal. I generally advocate looking to others’ lives for inspiration, but please avoid comparing yourself to others. Remember that you are on your own path, with your own great fortune, and your own liabilities, and your own things to learn. Don’t waste time comparing your situation to anyone else’s: get on with living your life and developing your music. (For an inspiring take on the artistic potential of student loans, please read this letter by the advice columnist/novelist who writes under the pseudonym Dear Sugar).

5. Being accountable to your art means being financially responsible. The ability to be accountable to yourself and to your finances might be the most important skill you can cultivate to allow you to realize your creative dreams.

How to Make a Budget and Live Within Your Means

1. Start by taking an honest appraisal. Get a handle on where your money comes from, and where it goes.

2. Track your spending for a month. Be rigorous, but don’t beat yourself up.

3. Tally your figures. Tally your income from all categories. Then tally your spending. Assign categories for Gas, Rent, Utilities, Clothing, Musical Supplies, Food, Entertainment, Loans, Medical, Local Travel, Concerts, Treats, etc. Be sure to account for things you pay quarterly or yearly (taxes, memberships, instrument insurance) and come up with a monthly amount to account for this cost. Think ahead to upcoming expenses, too. Will you be taking auditions? Recording an album? Buying new performance clothes?

4. Compare your income with your expenses. Are you spending more than you earn? Are you just breaking even? Are you earning more than you expected? Do you have the time you need to invest in your future career? Compare this against your short, medium and long-term goals.

How to Improve Your Lot in Life

1. Cultivate multiple streams of revenue. Most people think about supporting their art through one thing: either the job or their dreams, or a day job. One source of income is precarious. Cultivate multiple streams of income to build a stable platform. You can reconfigure it constantly, and will better be able to ride the ups and downs of your career and the economy. (See the list at the end of the page for some things musicians I know have done to make money to keep careers afloat.)

2. Charge more. Educate yourself about the fair market value of your services. Make sure you account for the cost of benefits in your freelance prices (up to 30% more). Be clear about terms of payment. Don’t be shy to follow up.

3. Barter for everything you can and use every resource available to you. Trading dollar for dollar (not hour for hour) can net you free graphic design, dental care, photography, you name it. And there are numerous free resources for artists: medical clinics, legal services, databases, workshops, consulting services. Find out about them and use them.

4. Reduce your overhead. I know that sometimes you will have to spend more money than you earn. But over time, if your income is not meeting your expenses you will have no choice but to re-evalute your spending patterns.

5. Be fierce about defending your time, creativity and well-being. Keep time available to yourself. Set aside regular time for reflection, evaluation and recalibration.

Things to Think About When Thinking About Day Jobs

1. What’s your security style? Do you feel more comfortable knowing your needs are met with a steady cheque? Do you feel confined by a regular job? Can you tolerate uncertainty?

2. What are your natural strengths and how can you turn them into paid employment? Do you love spreadsheets? Do you love the company of kids? Are you a meticulous organizer? Are you multilingual? Do you love yoga? What classes are you naturally good at? Any of these skills can be turned into a source of income. But in order for you to make money there has to be a market: you have to identify and fill a need.

3. What schedule works best for you to practice and play music? Do you need regular time set aside for practice? Do you need flexibility to tour and travel? If you work nights, will you miss out on networking opportunities?

4. How can you find the right balance of activities that result in a life where you don’t merely survive, but where you thrive? In general, look for the job that will provide you with the greatest income, with the lowest demands in terms of time and stress.

Things I or People I Know Have Done For Money*

Grants, Artist residencies, Teaching, Investments, Work sales, Bartering, In-kind donations, Living with Mom, Living with Dad, Awards, Freelancing, Consulting, Income from your partner, Busking, Weddings, Day jobs, In-kind donations, Teaching residencies, Adjunct teaching, Proofreading, Accounting, Voice coaching, Translation, Bartending, Tutoring, Babysitting, Nannying, Subletting,
Real estate investment, Royalties, Workshops, Cover band, Coding, Pizza delivery, Cater waiter, Kickstarter, Security Guard, Courier, Museum Guard, Administration, Assisting, Dog walking, Paralegal, Therapist, Life coach, Graduate school, Tour guide, TESOL, Travel grants, Couchsurfing, Housesitting, Playing for dance classes, Teaching another instrument, Dinner theater, Cleaning services, Personal assistant, Private school teaching, Church musician, Arranging, Choir directing, Personal trainer, Yoga teaching, Copying, Painting, Producing records, Guerilla marketing, Summer workshops, Steady restaurant gig, Radio/print journalism, Archivist, Construction, Piano tuning, Stay-at-home parent, Graphic design, Makeup , CDs for Irish Dancing, Chess teacher, Math and Music Coach, SAT tutor, Temp, Teaching assistant, Modeling, Hair model, Movie extra.

*Out of these 84 items, there are only 20 that I can’t claim to have done at one point or another

I spent my last afternoon in Kabul with the girls. Marjan covered our palms and forearms in drizzles of henna paste. After, we sat out in the yard, arms outstretched, palms up, waiting for the paste to dry. A posture of pleasant helplessness. More girls gathered to use the rest of the tube, sketching intricate designs in ballpoint pen before carefully squeezing out the henna paste. Three girls took my right hand in theirs like a school of little fish, flicking and scraping off ridges of dried henna with their fingernails. Marjan led me over to the pump, scrubbing at my hands and arms to reveal sharp, startling deep orange designs. I gave the girls my camera, and it was they who took most of these pictures of a perfect afternoon.

Total cost, 10 Afs or about twenty cents.

- Kabul, 14 August 201

So on the night of the concert, I didn’t know much about what music that would be played, and I experienced the concert much as anyone in the audience did. One performer after another came to the stage, and introduced a piece of music that reflected a personal engagement with Afghanistan, with our (for many of us, adopted) American home, and with our global family of musicians.

The performances were by turns thoughtful, profound, ironic, reverential, and irreverent. Afterward, I had the rare and distinct feeling that we’d done something good. ‘Good’ can sound anodyne, but I mean it in the fullest sense of the word. Good for each of us, for everyone in the room, and in some small and substantial way, for the world.

My heartfelt thanks to all the performers; to Rachel Roberts, Andrew Hurlbut, Rob Flax and Gil Aharon for logistical support, and to all who attended the concert.

As musicians, we generally labour under the assumption that our music should speak for itself, and for us. So it was a particular pleasure to hear one musician after another tell the stories behind their songs with so articulately and passionately. In place of a YouTube link or an MP3 file, then, I’ll share something of this evening with you through the words of those the performers. Read on.

Tanya Kalmanovitch, Kabul, August 5 2011

Pianist Bert Seager, introducing Kenny Wheeler’s “Everybody’s Song But My Own”, performed with vocalist Katie Seiler:

I am sure that I speak for everyone where when I say that our deepest wish is for the cessation of violence and for peace. Along those lines, our second song, Kenny Wheeler’s “Everybody’s Song But My Own” is offered as a prayer that the children of Afghanistan can live in a land where they can freely discover their music and imagine their own songs and can live, sing and play them together in peace.

Israeli flutist Amir Milstein, introducing Rumba Blanca by Stu HaCohen, performed with Ted Reichman, accordion:

I would like to play for you a song called Rumba Blanca, by the Israeli/Bulgarian composer Stu HaChoen. Stu was ten years old when the Second World War started. He lived in Bulgaria, and his family was the only Jewish family in the village. When the Bulgarian Army came after them he ran away. He found shelter with the local gypsies … he took his accordion with him and that kept him happy—as happy as he could be at that time—through the war. When the war ended, he was 15 years old. He came to Israel and became a great mentor for many generations of musicians.

Music is what gave a lot of hope to Stu during the war, and music is what gave great joy to his everyday life. I hope that all the people of ANIM can give that kind of joy and hope to the children in Afghanistan.

Singer and songwriter Leah Hennessy, introducing a song she wrote for the occasion:

Tanya had sent a bunch of images and articles about Afghanistan and there was one picture in particular that spoke to me. I wrote this song with that in mind, and also a Wallace Stevens poem called “The Dove in the Belly”, the dove in the belly being a metaphor for inner peace. [The poem says that] when you experience something as beautiful, part of what makes it beautiful is the response you have within you.

Guitarist Hayes Griffin, introducing Tom Paxton’s “What Did You Learn in School Today?”:

This song is kind of a sarcastic poke of fun at how we take in information and learn information in this country, definitely something that pertains to the conflict in Afghanistan. I think that your average American citizen doesn’t know half of what’s going on over there and it’s great to have people who have been there who can come back and tell us what’s been going on, and not paint quite the bleak picture that the United States media likes to do…

Hayes Griffin, introducing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”:

The next tune is one that all of you probably know, written by the late great Woody Guthrie. This song was a response to the song “God Bless America”. As many of you know, Woody was a pretty adamant Communist supporter, back at a time in our country’s history when that wasn’t the cool thing to do. So this was his response to the glossed-over, sugar-coated view of the American way of life. I think it’s appropriate to play this song tonight, because it asks all the questions that we need to be asking. What are we doing in this world, and how are we sharing it with each other?

Ted Reichman, introducing his arrangement of Randy Newman’s “Political Science” as performed by the Lindenbomber Fleet:

What you’re about to hear is a song that’s frequently misunderstood … It’s appropriate to go on after Woody Guthrie and This Land is Your Land: after one of the most sincere American songwriters, you will now be hearing one of the least sincere American songwriters. The word most usually associated with this song and songwriter is irony, and I also think that irony is a good word to associate with our involvement in Afghanistan, unfortunately. One thing to keep in mind as you listen to this song is that it was written about 35 years ago in a very different political context. And the really ironic thing is that so much of it really has come true, today.

Greek vocalist Panayiota Chalouloukou, introducing “A Timeless Place (The Peacocks)”. Music by Jimmy Rowles, lyrics by Norma Winstone, performed with pianist Lefteris Kordis:

This is the picture we were inspired [by]; the faces of these kids. This song includes a lot of imagery from the world of fantasy and imagination, which I think should be the world of every kid on this planet.

Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra, introducing his composition, performed here for solo saxophone:

I’ve known Tanya for a few years now, and the most important thing I’ve always noticed about her is that she’s an extreme multi-tasker … You know, I’m not really a political, war and peace kind of guy when it comes to music, so I thought, “let’s focus on the multitasking part”. I write a piece a couple of weeks ago for a tour in Chicago, a kind of a neurotic multitasking kind of piece, called “Title Here”.

Travis Alford, introducing “Stone and Glass: Reverence” from Chapel Music (2011), performed with Tanya Kalmanovitch and Borey Shin:

Last summer, I started sketching some musical ideas about scared spaces. Actual physical spaces, structures like churches, small amphitheatres out in the woods … But the more I thought about it, the more my thoughts expanded to the idea that any space can be sacred … we all have our own spaces that are dear to us, even if it’s in our own mind, something that we make ourselves.

One of the things I love about music is that more than any other art form, it allows you to create a sacred space for yourself, alone and with others. Hearing Tanya talk about the kids in Afghanistan and hearing what they’re able to do with music, and what music is able to do for them, I know they are creating their own scared spaces for themselves and their friends.

IMAGINE A world without music. It’s like something out of a soul-deadening, dystopian future. And yet the people of Afghanistan living under Taliban rule in the 1990s were forbidden to sing, play an instrument, or listen to music except for prescribed religious or patriotic chants. Anyone in violation, the mullahs decreed, would have molten lead poured into their ears on Judgment Day – and be subject to jail or beatings here on earth.

The Taliban smashed instruments, burned recordings, and destroyed the archives of traditional Afghan folk songs at Radio Kabul. Even after they were routed from power in 2001, and fatwas gave way to the secular depredations of war and poverty, music has been treated with suspicion. Playing Mozart in Kabul can be a little like reading Lolita in Tehran. So it was an act of bravery as well as hope when the Afghanistan National Institute of Music opened last summer.

“Music is a potent mechanism for self-actualization,’’ said Tanya Kalmanovitch, a violist and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. “To be able to convey something through music requires you to recognize that you have something to say, and that you have a right to say it. That alone in many contexts can be a radical political act.’’

Kalmanovitch took a small delegation of conservatory students to help teach at the institute last winter, and she is going back in August. She works with the founder and principal, Ahmad Sarmast, son of a famous Afghan composer and conductor. With the help of funding mostly from the World Bank and Germany, and with the full support – for now – of the Afghan government, he has stocked the school with traditional Afghan rubabs (a short-necked lute), stringed ghichaks and sarods, and sitars, as well as Western instruments.

“Many of our master musicians have passed away,’’ Sarmast says in a trailer for a documentary film being produced about the school. “We have instruments no one can play. Afghanistan does not even have an orchestra to play our national anthem.’’

Half the seats at the school are set aside for war orphans or street children, who normally subsist selling gum or plastic tote bags to cars stuck in Kabul’s relentless traffic. With the help of the non-governmental Aschiana Foundation, families are given a stipend of about $30 a month to keep their children off the streets and in school. Most are adolescents who have no memory of life without war or oppression.

Music has been a propaganda tool and rallying cry throughout the centuries, striking discordant notes among tyrants who fear threats to the political or social order. Slaves had their drums seized lest they be used to communicate and plan rebellions. The Ayatollah Khomeni banned secular music in Iran. It was taboo to listen to the Beatles in Cuba in the 1960s. In Somalia in April, radio stations were ordered to stop playing music and jingles on the grounds that songs are un-Islamic.

Music can also heal, as anyone who has sung a lullaby or even a funeral hymn can attest. At the Kabul institute, the healing comes in part through the strangely soothing repetition of practice scales. “In the midst of seemingly relentless tragedy and complexity,’’ Kalmanovitch said, “doing the simple, ordinary work with the children of repeating the physical movements just struck me as enormously rare and important.’’

Kalmanovitch is hosting a benefit concert with other New England Conservatory faculty and students on Monday at the Lily Pad in Cambridge (disclosure: my husband, who also teaches at the conservatory, will be among those performing). She is calling it “Music from the Front Pages,’’ and asked the musicians to select pieces that reflect their views on the war.

She worries about the fate of Afghanistan after American troops withdraw in 2014 and the world’s attention drifts elsewhere. Insurgent Taliban continue to attack, even in Kabul. Suicide bombs and assassinations destabilize the country. But the music keeps her coming back. “Already the children are playing at such a high level,’’ she says. “To see these traditions revive before your eyes in the hands of children is really inspiring.’’ For now, Afghanistan’s musical future is upbeat.

Date: Monday, July 18, 2011, 7:30 – 9:30 PM
Place: The Lily Pad, 1353 Cambridge Street, Inman Square
Tickets: $10 (students $7)

“When we are sad or grieving, listening to music comforts us. Because of listening to music, our spirit is lifted and our pain and suffering goes away.” – Afghan children interviewed for a documentary about ANIM

Since opening its doors in spring of 2010, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) has been working to rebuild the social and cultural life of Afghanistan by providing a safe, tuition-free, and musically rich learning environment for the children of Kabul and its surrounding villages. Tanya Kalmanovitch, Assistant Chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department, first traveled to ANIM last winter as a guest artist, and will be returning this summer to offer private lessons, support to the youth orchestra, and to prepare advanced students to step into teaching roles. On Monday, July 18, a diverse collection of NEC faculty and students will appear in Music from the Front Pages, to raise funds for Kalmanovitch’s summer residency at ANIM.

Performers include Bert Seager (piano), Dominique Eade (vocalist), Ted Reichman (accordion), Jorrit Dijkstra (saxophone), Leah Hennessy (jazz/singer-songwriter), Hayes Griffin (bluegrass guitar), and more. Each artist will select or create a piece of music that reacts to an image, a word, or a quote from journalistic accounts of the war in Afghanistan.

This concert invites us to step back from the relentless immediacy of the news cycle and seemingly endless human tragedy and examine the profound value of music as a mechanism for hope and human progress.

For more information about the NEC-ANIM partnership visit necinafghanistan.tumblr.com, and to lend your support go to http://www.indiegogo.com/Teaching-Music-in-Kabul.

Performers include: Bert Seager, Amir Milstein, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Travis Alford, Ted Reichman, Hayes Griffin, Jorrit Dijkstra, Leah Hennessy, Leftheris Kordis, Panayota Chaloulakou, Dominique Eade, Yasmine Azaiez, Dave Cordes, Derek Beckvold, Geni Skendo, Borey Shin, Mia Friedman, Lautaro Mantilla, Beth McDonald, and more.

May, 2011

Sunrise, sunset—it’s the end of the year and we’re feeling all reflective. Last week in the Entrepreneurial Musician class we spent a little more time talking about the M-word. No, not music, money. Well, money as it relates to music. A few particularly pensive students lingered after class—they wanted answers. How do we make a life in music work? Give it to us straight! In response, we put our heads together and set out a few guiding principles that we’ve found especially helpful in our own paths.

1. The fate of your career is not determined by what happens in the first few years out of school. Think about your career as a long, fluid succession of twists and turns. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Too many people judge themselves prematurely: you tell yourself that if you haven’t accomplished X by Y date, it’s never going to happen. Not true. F@*$ Y date.

2. You can only get so far by depriving yourself of lattes. What do we mean by that? That living cheaply is not the whole answer to weathering the first few years out of school. Sure, you want to live within your means, and you may not have a huge flow of money coming your way, but the point is, there are two sides to the equation: expenditures and income. If you can’t cut back any further without turning into a cheerless miser, then you might want to think about earning more instead of spending less. You’re thinking it’s impossible, aren’t you? It’s all how you look at it. Sometimes it’s easier to earn an extra $400 a month than it is to save the same amount by cutting back. Check out Ramit Sethi’s recent post in the New York Times Bucks blog for more on this idea, and check out Ramit’s own web site for a host of ideas on how to earn $1000 a month on the side.

3. Your first years out of school are a time for investing in yourself. You will be building capital in the form of professional networks, experience, extended training, reputation, and a body of personal work. You might not be building a lot of financial capital, but the creative capital you build during this time builds a strong foundation for the rest of your career. Don’t underestimate the value of creative capital. (Meanwhile, healthy financial habits keep your head above water.)

4. Now it’s time to debunk an unproductive myth about musical careers. Who says the only honorable way to make a living as a musician is with an instrument in your hand? (No, really, who said that? We want to know where he or she lives.) We are all multifaceted people. We all know how to do many different things. There is more to us than music. If your career is taking you in a direction where you’re making a comfortable living playing the music you want to play, more power to you. But if that’s not happening, there are many reasons why this might be, very few of which have anything to do with your quality as an artist, let alone as a person. Maybe the music you want to make has a smaller audience. (If so, that doesn’t make your music any less vital. We say it makes it all the more vital!) Maybe your career path has a slower rise (opera singers, that’s you, but it’s also any artist whose creative development takes place over a lifetime, and we’re not talking in dog years, here). Maybe you’ve sampled all your available options for musical employment, and find that none of them are the right fit. So, if a “traditional” musical career is not happening right out of the gate, carve your own path. Keep going. See point number 1.

4(a). And don’t think of non-musical employment as purgatory. You may find that a “day job” can ignite you and be an asset to your work as an artist. Maybe you find you actually enjoy the stimulation of doing something different. Maybe the connections you build and the money you make allow you to do artistic work that otherwise would have been impossible.

4(b). One more thing. You’re not an evil person if financial stability is important to you. No one said you can’t be a great musician AND have a stable income.

5. In most cases, no one decision you make will irrevocably change the course your life. We make a lot of little decisions every day that push us forward, or move us back. Check in with yourself often, and adjust as you go along. This is all to say, if you make a career move that sends you down a path you find undesirable, don’t despair. Change it up. Examine the fabric of your daily work life and figure out what it is that makes you feel rewarded. And if something feels like it’s sucking your soul, figure out what that is, too. Building a happy professional life is all about steering yourself away from the soul sucking and into the green and pleasant meadows of the rewarding. It may not happen overnight, but if you are self-reflective — and actually do something about your self-reflections — then it will happen in time.

6. Speaking of doing something… Be prepared to work harder than you think you have to. Be prepared to do things you don’t initially want to do. Be prepared to invest steeply in yourself. If you believe a life in music is worth having, then it’s worth the hard work. Luckily, you all know about hard work already. You do it every day in the practice room, in class and on stage. Now, you’ve just got to extend your work ethic to other activities. For example, booking and promoting your shows, maintaining an online presence, taking auditions, managing a teaching studio, etc. These activities may at times make you feel disconnected from the passion that led you down the path of a musical career. But it’s all interrelated, and it’s all part of the project of making a life in music. We know there are only 24 hours in a day, but small consistent efforts over time (see point number 1) pay off handsomely. Every time. Promise.

7. Congratulations, you’re in control. When you’re in school, it can feel like everyone’s telling you what you can and cannot do. Out of school, suddenly, you’re the one who’s steering the ship. There is a lot of freedom and possibility that come with this new stage. There is also some aimlessness, and you shouldn’t be too down on yourself if you lose your bearings for a while. That’s what the wandering twenties are for, friends. It’s all about trying things out and crossing things off the list. See also point number 1.

8. Don’t obsessively compare yourself to others. It’s a drag, and mostly, you’re just projecting your own imaginings onto another person’s reality. Their life might be awesome, or it might be really dark and hollow. The world will never know.

9. The main strategy for advancing yourself as an artist is: work, refine, develop, repeat. It never ends. This is good news. You will always have something productive and meaningful to do with your life, and it rests entirely in your hands. Your music will be one constant, stable element in your life; an anchor when other areas get murky. Most people don’t have this: they just have TV.

10. Don’t suffer alone. If you’re questioning your path or feeling unsettled, talk to someone about it. Talk to us about it. Believe me, you’re not the only one who questions yourself or feels unsettled. We all do, and it is utterly liberating to realize that most people feel a little insecure and ponderous as they face change. There are also many resources at your disposal. Don’t be a hero. Take advantage of people and information that can help you get over life’s little humps. First stop: EM department, SB106. If nothing else, we usually have baked goods in the office.

Now, we have to thank you. Yes, you. These life and career negotiations never really stop cropping up. They may shift slightly with each decade of life, but they are there, like little sneaks, waiting for you just around the next corner. When we guide students through the process of career visioning and planning, we engage in the same process, too. We’re asking ourselves all the same difficult questions and learning from your answers. 50 minutes, once a week, just isn’t enough time to wrangle these topics. At the end of each class we feel that so much is left unsaid. That’s why we’ve written this to you.

We like to talk — and write — but we also like productive outcomes. So what are the productive outcomes of this piece? Well, one, it was pretty cathartic to write. Two, we hope you laughed a little, and saw your experience reflected in some small way. But most important is three: we’d like to carve out some space for these conversations to happen more often. What we’re proposing is this: bi-monthly dish sessions. Good company, good snacks, and straight-up conversation about the future of music—your future in music. We’ll run these every two weeks starting in the fall, but first up is Monday, May 16 at 5PM in SB106. Spread the word, drop us a line to let us know you’re coming, and send us your inspired suggestions for snacks.

Wishing you a restorative summer, with lots of fresh tomatoes and slightly tanner skin (apply sunscreen regularly).

—Tanya & Eva

Contributed by: Tanya Kalmanovitch, Assistant Chair of the Contemporary Improvisation Department and Eva Heinstein, Program Manager of Entrepreneurial Musicianship

Music: Kalinka (Ivan Petrovich Larionov), performed by Tanya Kalmanovitch, violin and Ted Reichman, accordion. April 26 2010 in Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston MA.

Images: scenes from Scenes from Умирающий Лебедь (The Dying Swan), featuring Vera Alexeyeva Karalli, directed by Yevgeni Bauer (1917).

Notes on “Kalinka”

In the introduction to Gulag: A History, historian Anne Appelbaum observes a brisk tourist trade in Soviet paraphernalia springing up on Prague’s Charles River Bridge in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet monolith. Western tourists who would be sickened by the thought of wearing a swastika snapped up pins, hats and T-shirt emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. “It was a minor observation”, she writes, “but sometimes it is through just such minor observations that a cultural mood is best observed. For here, the lesson could not have been clearer: while the symbol of one mass murder fills us with horror, the symbol of another mass murder makes us laugh.”

The iconic Kalinka is not a Russian folk song. It was composed in 1860 by composer and folklorist Ivan Petrovich Larionov, and can be located squarely in the tradition of Russian musical nationalism, in which elements of Russian folklore – actual and imagined – were adapted and adopted into Russian art and popular music. Under the Soviet regime, Russian folklore and pseudofolklore were professionalized, popularized and propagandized as emblems of a natural, authoritative Soviet ideal. In the latter half of the 20th century, Kalinka was made ubiquitous in the Soviet Union through broadcast on State-owned television, and later as the theme to the computer game Tetris. In the 21st century, Kalinka has been appropriated for yet another new purpose: when Russian oligarch Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich bought the famed Chelsea Football Club in 2003, he made Kalinka the club’s theme song.

How we receive this song — with nostalgia, fear, or naiveté — reveals something of our position with respect to a vexed, and largely unvoiced history.

- Tanya Kalmanovitch, April 26 2010