Artist: Egun Beltzak
Title: A Bask Tribute to Yanka Dyagileva
Genre: Folk-Punk, Post-Punk
Country: Spain (Basque Country)
Release date: 2022
Track List:
- Lurretik gora oinak altxa
- Egun Beltzetan
- Legedi Berezia
- Erreinu erdia
- Trenbidetik
- Belauneraino
- Adimen handiaz
- Bidean txanpon bat
- Su itsugarria
- Nyurkarentzako kantua
- Hartza atera da
- Saldua
- Armiarmak
- Klasez kanpoko elementuak
This album is one of those releases that make me want to say "Well, not I truly have heard everything..." A Basque-language tribute to Yanka Dyagileva, one of the classic singers of Siberian punk? That's surely one-of-a-kind release, although not that unexpected as it could seem at a first glance: after all, the interest for everything Soviet was always present in the Spanish/Basque punk scene, and Yanka isn't that unknown outside ex-USSR (even Massive Attack have performed one of her songs in 2013).
As you could expect, it's folksy sounding punk with female vocals, and the quality of production is of course much better compared to Yanka's original songs from the late 80's. The songs sound surprisingly good in Basque, and it's a good tribute to Yanka who died under rather mysterious circumstances 30 years before. Here's a machine translation of the album's release notes in Basque:
"It has been a long time since I first heard some of Yanka Dyagileva’s recordings; the sound quality was poor and the performances rough, yet the voice—sometimes honey-sweet, sometimes raw—conveyed deep emotions from the very depths of the soul, even though I could not understand the words.
I decided then to learn Russian, intending to read Yanka’s poems without intermediaries and to immerse myself in the culture through the language—until I had to admit I couldn't manage it on my own, for Yanka’s poetry is complex. It is profound and rich in language, masterfully blending inner feelings, Siberian folktales, the peculiarities of the Soviet Union of her time, and a bitter anguish.
It has been a long collaboration involving many facets.
On one hand, the tremendous help and cooperation of writers and historians who lived through the Soviet era were essential for translating and analyzing the texts—examining them both sentence by sentence and as a whole.
However, as is only natural, the texts could not be translated word-for-word into Basque; to preserve the songs' rhyme and meter, I used synonyms or equivalent phrases that captured the original meaning.
On the other hand, the resources for production were very modest; yet, in the crucible of imagination and love, beautiful things can be created gently and tenderly"
