Oleg Lifanovskii: Criminal Songs

Oleg Lifanovskii comes from very far away. He comes from Nakhodka, on Russia's Pacific coast. Closed for many years to any foreigners, it was a vital port for the Soviet navy.

Living in Nakhodka would seem like exile to many people, and - suitably enough - Lifanovskii is an interesting practitioner of the so-called "criminal" or "blatnaia" song. These are stories of life in Russia's underworld, living in prison, in exile, or on the run: robbers, burglars, murderers, prostitutes, and other members of the family. Lifanovskii dedicated one of his albums in 2005 to the genre and called it, somewhat sensibly, "Songs of the Criminal World."

Even though the term comes from the start of the twentieth century, there are references in Chekhov, Tolstoi, and Dostoevskii to criminal songs. When, in fact, Dostoevskii was imprisoned in Omsk, he wrote that these nasty ditties were "too well-known" among the inmates! Everybody knew them - better than classic poetry.

Traditionally the "blatnaia" song will combine a series of set motifs, such as the cruel workings of fate, a life spent wandering, brotherhood behind bars, yearning for absent girlfriends, the corrupt legal system, and so forth. Lifanovskii's tracklist here makes his commitment to that tradition very clear: "Barefoot through Life," "The Prisons of Riazan'," "Amnesty," and "I Didn't Want to Steal," to name but four.

Lifanovskii adds a very jaunty, almost karaoke-like backing track to most of his songs. This devil-may-care syncopation shows how tales of lawbreaking now seem sufficiently widespread to be "normal"; they can therefore be lightly brushed off. His rhythms also make these miserable adventures more palatable for radio, since criminal songs nowadays tend to be discussed as "chanson." They're big business.

Born in 1960, Lifanovskii didn't start playing the guitar seriously until he was 30. That speaks to the unique market for chanson: as a genre, it has little time for fickle fashion or spotty youthful listeners. Criminal songs are about life in Russia - from those who have actually lived it. In that spirit, above is a clip from the genuinely "folk" song "Amnesty" - a rare example of optimism, or at least the hope that things will get better. Almost all of Lifanovskii's criminal works come from the Soviet period, in particular from between the 30s and 70s: his Russian lyricists and their heroes have been dreaming of "something better" for a very long time.