Willy's Original Article
about the Plowboys' 2001 Russia Trip
(The edited version appeared in the June 3, 2001 Rutland
Herald)
It was late and dark, and we were completely, helplessly lost.
Unwittingly, my brother Dan and I had taken the wrong bus from downtown Petrozavodsk, peering in vain around the heads of the Russian passengers for the landmarks we had memorized - a red Coca-Cola billboard, a row of flimsy kiosks, a nine-story apartment building with a burned-out car on the sidewalk. But the landmarks never materialized, and we grew increasingly uneasy as the bus, crowded when we had boarded, began emptying out.
Finally, the bus lurched into a small, muddy yard and stopped. The end of the line.
The remaining passengers walked away into the night. We got off, too, and the driver killed the motor. Clearly his work was done and the bus would not be returning to town. We stood there, with not a clue where we were and maybe 20 words of Russian between us (all of them Dan's, who had been to Russia before). A young man was sweeping the sidewalk under a pale streetlight, and Dan asked him hopefully, "Ulitsa Tonyava?" It was the name of the street where Galena Makarecheva, our hostess, lived in a third-floor apartment with her 14-year-old son Pasha.
The sweeper paused, then gestured unconvincingly down the street. We set off in that direction, but there was little sign of civilization ahead so we returned, forlorn, to the bus stop.
Spying a phone booth, we searched our pockets for rubles and Dan found Galena's number on a scrap of paper. But we could see little in the darkness, and could not puzzle out how to operate a Russian pay phone.
I noticed a man watching us, one of the few people lurking in this desolate outpost. He was dressed in a leather jacket like most Russian men in late winter, and had a mustache and somewhat triangular ears. If ever there were a couple of easy marks, ripe for exploitation, it was us. I affected nonchalance while Dan fumbled with the telephone.
Eventually the man walked over.
"No money," he said, pointing at the pay phone. "Only card."
Another setback. But this fellow had a few words of English, so Dan tried again, "Ulitsa Tonyava?"
The man gestured into the blackness and indicated that we were not close. "No bus," he said, "only taxi." That gave us a spark of hope, until he added, "No taxi. Too late."
I began to visualize a night spent wandering through Petrozavodsk, a town, Galena had warned us, not immune to the lawlessness pervading Russia's post-Communist social and economic freefall. Recently, two boys had murdered a homeless man, a brutal act symbolic, Galena thought, of a degenerating society.
As these thoughts played through my head the man in the leather jacket went over to a small car - a Russian-made Lada - parked by the curb, and spoke to the driver. Then he turned to us and said, "Get in."
I had little doubt that this was a setup. Still, we got in back and after the man climbed into the front passenger's seat the Lada took off. If anything, the roads got darker and more desolate. In the edge of the headlight beams I saw a man staggering, holding his head. A drunk, or a crime victim? I calculated how Dan and I would fare if there was trouble, and wondered whether these men had weapons.
And then the world changed. The man from the bus stop turned and said to us, "You have good band. I like your music."
We were stunned.
"I hear you at Russian Theater."
"You did?," we exclaimed. We had been in Petrozavodsk less than 48 hours, and our band, Banjo Dan and the Midnite Plowboys, had performed just once - during the opening concert for the Folk Marathon World Music Festival 2001, at the grand (if weathered) theater at the foot of Ulitsa Karl Marx. Now chance or destiny had thrown us into the orbit of a man who had sat somewhere in that audience listening to American bluegrass from Vermont, and who happened to be one of the few souls in the universe standing at the lonely end of a bus route well past midnight. You can't make that up!
I confess that I still harbored some anxiety as the Lada rattled along, until suddenly I saw a robin's-egg blue sedan with a sloping trunk and old-fashioned roof rack - a distinctive car that sat permanently behind Galena's building and became for me a comforting symbol of safe arrival during our week in Petrozavodsk.
"That's it!," I called.
The driver stopped, and as we groped for our rubles our friend said, "No, no. I pay."
"No," we protested. "We'll pay. You have saved us."
"I pay," he insisted. "You are our guests."
We pumped his hand, thanked the stony-faced driver and got out. The car drove away into the night.
Dan and I looked at each other, relieved and amazed. We had been delivered, by music, once again. This called for a stiff shot of vodka.
Music is a form of deliverance, and most musicians I know can recount such stories of salvation at the hands of friends we have made, sometimes without knowing it, by plying our trade.
But more important is the deliverance music uniquely provides to a world in which people have more reason to become alienated from one another than reasons to come together. It was to participate in the cross-cultural fellowship enabled by music - more permanent and heartfelt than political ties of expedience - that my bandmates and I responded eagerly last December to an invitation to play in April at the second annual Folk Marathon in Karelia, a province in northern Russia.
The invitation came from Myllarit, a sparkling, seven-member band from Petrozavodsk. Myllarit plays the traditional music of Karelia, whose hybrid culture is more Finnish than Russian. Myllarit ( "The Millers") launched the Folk Marathon in 2000 to revive appreciation for ethnic music in Russia, where ballet and symphony thrive but folk artists are marginalized.
Myllarit has toured the U.S. in recent summers (and will return again this year), and because their tour manager, Sherry Merrick, lives in Post Mills, their trips are anchored in Vermont. Bearded, bearish Sasha has borrowed my bass for these excursions, providing some small acquaintance between their group and ours. A connection by both bands to Project Harmony of Waitsfield - a non-profit organization that sponsors cultural- and professional-exchange programs of tremendous vision between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union - sealed the bond.
But there is no money in Russia. Our participation therefore depended on the generous contributions we obtained, miraculously, from the Byrne Foundation, National Life of Vermont, Cabot Cooperative Creamery, the American Flatbread Co., the Vermont Bread Co. and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. It was with a measure of disbelief that we found ourselves embarking on our two-week journey on April 11. Joining us were Sherry Merrick, who expertly provide the same management services to us that she does for Myllarit, her patient and helpful husband Keith, and Charlie Hosford, founder of Project Harmony.
The Plowboys' roster consisted of long-time guitarist and singer Alan Davis of South Strafford, bass player and tenor singer Jon Henry Drake of Hyde Park, and fiddler Gene White of Burlington. Brothers Dan (that's Banjo Dan) and I (on mandolin) completed the fab fivesome. Previous though infrequent foreign travels have provided wonderful adventures and opportunities for us over the years, and we were eager to jump into the Folk Marathon fray.
It proved even more intriguing and rewarding than we imagined - because Dan's and my sojourn at the foreboding fringes of Petrozavodsk that night proved an apt metaphor for the whole trip. We found Russia to be somewhat disturbing and unwelcoming on the surface, but ultimately, under the glow of personal contact, Russians revealed themselves to be generous, caring and gracious. In the U.S., I submit that we have adopted informality as a social lubricant, almost as if assumed friendship will vault us more quickly to the real thing. But Russian hosts are attentive almost to a fault and don't leave fellowship to chance; their guests' contentment matters too much for that.
Which is not to say we found Russian society in all of its outward manifestations to be particularly admirable. Here are some more-fitting adjectives: inefficient, obstructionist, indifferent, suspicious and corrupt. These traits were on display from the moment we entered the country.
We arrived in Russia on Friday, April 13, landing in St. Petersburg under wintry skies after a stopover in Helsinki where we had played for a Finnish bluegrass association. From the window of the plane I took in my first glimpse of Russia - the enigmatic "enemy" of my youth, land of Sputnik and May Day missile parades, our opposite in the decades-long dance of Mutual Assured Destruction. Now here was the real Russia, where the runway pavements were cracked and the service trucks - driven by actual Russian men grayly visible inside the cabs - were rusted, archaic beasts of a jarringly different vintage from our Finnair jet.
We tread over a pad soaked in chemicals to ward off foot-and-mouth disease. Then, inside the terminal, the stultifying Russia of legend was revealed. Our Customs official was a solemn young woman who, I thought, would have been pretty had she had any life in her face. She was, however, thorough. Dan was required nearly to dissect his banjo so she could see into all of its compartments. She studied my mandolin with a flashlight and magnifying glass, and questioned me about its age and origin.
The most intensive examination, however, was of Gene's violin. Gene, more affable and conversational than I, was eager to share the violin's long and interesting history. His reward was finding himself in a room with a team of inquisitors who were concerned, we later surmised, that he might leave the country with a different, cheaper violin, having sold his valuable fiddle, or "scripka," without declaring the transaction. The rest of us waited in the slushy parking lot while Charlie and Inna, an engaging Russian employee of Project Harmony, extricated Gene from the third degree.
Our time in St. Petersburg was brief, but fascinating. We were tourists, with no music obligations until we journeyed to Petrozavodsk two days later.
Founded in 1703 by Czar Peter the Great, St. Petersburg's classic architecture and beautiful monuments should be the pride of Russia. But the huge stone buildings, with their elegant arches and cornices, are crumbling with age and neglect. St. Petersburg looks like it's going to fall down.
And here we encountered an odd characteristic of Russian living - people's disregard for common spaces. The wide stairways and foyers of their buildings are littered with cigarette butts and debris. Once you enter someone's apartment you enter a home, with green plants and personal warmth. But those living quarters are all the more impressive for their clash with the junk on the other side of the door.
We "touristed" it up pretty good in St. Petersburg. We visited The Hermitage, one of the world's great art museums (where a pair of uniformed guards offered to sell us cut-rate tickets). We walked in bitter cold along the icy Neva River, and took in the Peter and Paul Fortress, including a cathedral where generations of nobility are entombed. We gawked at an old czarist jail. On the whole, it was a grand time for us, with happy restaurant meals and the flush of newfound adventure.
Then at midnight Sunday we boarded the train to Petrozavodsk for the real purpose of our trip, playing our songs and celebrating the myriad ways that people in the world make music.
The sleeping compartments were cramped and overheated, and when dawn broke we looked out upon snowy, barren, rural Russia. We chugged past occasional settlements with small cabins and rickety fences. Sherry, noticing there was no smoke from the chimneys, surmised that most were dachas, humble summer homes for urban Russians.
When we reached the station, members of Myllarit were there to greet us, as well as Galena, who would host Dan and me while the others dispersed to apartments around the city. A friend of Dan's and his wife Jaye, Galena teaches English and has visited Vermont. She and Pasha live comfortably if economically in a two-room apartment with kitchen and bath.
After breakfast and a brief nap, we took the bus into town for a press conference at the Myllarit Center, a building with a small auditorium and a multi-purpose room which was used throughout the week for nightly (morningly is more like it) parties and jam sessions. Journalists were on hand because the Folk Marathon World Music Festival is no small deal in Petrozavodsk. Myllarit sees to that. The seven band members - and especially Sergey Zobnev, Sasha Bykadorov and Arto Rinne - were everywhere, all week along, coordinating activities, emceeing the shows held in scattered venues around the city (much like First Night celebrations here), working with sound crews, handling the media, troubleshooting problems and partying at the Center until dawn. Miraculously, they had energy left for their own shows, which never failed to be spirited, animated performances, always well attended. Petrozavodsk clearly loves its local band.
The extravaganza really got started that night, when the opening concert at the Russian Theater drew a full house (including the guy in the leather coat destined to rescue Dan and me the next night). Some 15 groups performed at the Marathon that week, including several from Moscow and Petrozavodsk, a band from St. Petersburg, bagpipers from Scotland, bands from Finland and Ukraine, and Huun Huur Tu, the world-famous "throatsingers" of Tuva.
And there was Banjo Dan and the Midnite Plowboys. As the American guests of honor, we opened the concert Monday night. People have asked, since our return, how bluegrass went over in Russia. The answer is that we were wonderfully received. After all, how often do Russians get to hear a dynamic, ringing, five-string banjo, the passionate sweep of a bluegrass fiddle, or the high-tenor vocals that put a fine emotional point on the music stylized by the great Bill Monroe? Particularly on this night, in a beautiful hall with fine acoustics and an audience ready to enjoy itself, our music came together nicely, and it was a gratifying experience.
Following us on the bill that night was Marimba, from Moscow, which featured flute, clarinet, saxophone, cello, drums, bass and a brilliant marimba player who was the centerpiece of the band. Their material was jazz-oriented, modernistic and highly arranged. Then came a St. Petersburg band that similarly stressed compositional music. Its lead instruments were flute, mandolin, accordion and cello, backed by guitar and bass, plus drums. All except the flute were electronically amplified.
Many of the selections performed by the St. Petersburg group were tonally and rhythmically experimental. In one memorable number the cello played long, sloping double stops (two notes, on adjacent strings, played simultaneously) that ascended slowly and plaintively, with a keen intensity amplified by electronic distortion. The drums, bass and guitar laid down a dramatic, somewhat tribal rhythm under this sustained, urgent sound.
The presence of these bands, plus others - including White Owl from Moscow, a heavily rock-influenced band with a dynamic female singer - raised a question: How "folk" was the Folk Marathon supposed to be?
I asked Arto and Sasha about this later in the week. They explained that "folk" and "rural" were not necessarily linked. Urban music had traditions of its own, and Russian players were likely to be musically trained.
"The main thing is for people to understand deeper their musical roots," said Sasha. "This music is very different from what you hear on the radio, (which is) easygoing pop."
But he added: "It's very important that we were able to get bands from Vermont and Scotland, so that people can see how others keep up their musical traditions, even for hundreds of years."
The disparate musical backgrounds of our assemblage were made clear to me at one of the nightly parties, when Marimba's clarinet player explained, almost in agony, how much he envied our band's spontaneity and musicianship. This, from a highly skilled player who could breathe life into music just from reading it off a piece of paper. I had no words to tell him he was speaking to a musical illiterate.
For me, a highpoint of the festival was a performance specifically for the Plowboys by Toive, a music-and-dance ensemble of some two dozen students from the University of Petrozavodsk that adheres to Karelia's traditions. Their songs were not in Russian, but Finnish. Their instrumental support included stringed and wind instruments both familiar and obscure, some of ancient regional lineage. Mostly, these are used to accompany the dancers, a captivating group of young men and women in rustic garb who also formed a vocal chorus.
Myllarit's mission of reviving respect for "roots" music derives in no small measure from the fact that some of its members are alumnae of Toive.
But the greatest performance all week, to these ears, was by Huun Huur Tu, the throat singers from Tuva. Their homeland is an autonomous republic near Mongolia, four days from Moscow by train.
Their music is otherworldly. Tuvan singers have derived a way to create whistle-like overtones above an impossibly deep, guttural growl, interjected among impassioned verses that are sung in the Tuvans' native tongue. These sounds, I thought, could develop only in great expanse and solitude, and be inspired by the wind. In fact, Tuva is a land of herders who spend their lives on horseback. The carved headstocks of the group's bowed instruments were in the shape of horse heads, and the percussionist used hoofs, among other implements, to keep time. Midway through their concert I came to realize that this was cowboy music from the moon!
It was hard to leave Petrozavodsk. A small gaggle of newfound friends waved at us as from the station platform as the night train took us back to St. Petersburg, where we played for a gathering at the home of the U.S. consul general. Then, on another overnight train, it was on to Moscow.
Arriving in that city of 10 million people, I was glad we had been elsewhere in Russia first. Because Moscow seemed almost unconnected to that vast and fabled country. Approximately 75 percent of Russia's wealth is in Moscow, whose streets are crowded with BMWs, Mercedes and SUVs instead of the rusting Ladas of Petrozavodsk and St. Pete.
Post-Communist Moscow is a city of casinos, hustle and glitter, a glutton for electric power with giant SANYO signs mounted atop the buildings and traffic coursing through the wide streets in a sleepless pulse. Most disconcerting were the cars driving or parked upon the sidewalks, rudely protruding into the pedestrian walkspace. Despite the omnipresence of police officers looking for ways to fleece the innocent, Moscow has the character of a modern frontier town peopled with scofflaws.
Moscow's history, however, is abundantly on display. We visited Red Square, home of St. Basil's Cathedral with its famous onion domes, and an ancient stone circle where Ivan the Terrible lopped off the heads of his subjects. We walked solemnly through Lenin's Tomb, and toured the statue garden where Khrushchev's bust has been removed, making him a non-person in Soviet history, while the butcher Stalin remains on display. Not quite obscured amidst Moscow's modern architecture is the occasional, domed Orthodox church. And looming over the city are the "seven ugly sisters" - imposing Stalin-era edifices erected to express the power and permanence of Communism. Modern Muscovites hate the buildings; hence their nickname.
Our gigs were winding down now. They included an informal concert in the U.S. Embassy (where our bluegrass brought memories of home to certain Kentuckians and Virginians), and a couple of nightclubs, which brought us a taste of Moscow's roiling night life.
But soon it was time to depart. Another harried trip through the city, and another ordeal for Gene and Charlie getting the "scripka" out of Russia - this time Customs officials wanted Gene to produce a picture of the instrument - and we were on our way home.
There is a permanence to experiences like the one our troupe of eight had together in Russia. They change you.
But among all the highlights of our trip, one small concert stands out. Here there was no proscenium and spotlights. Instead, we played without microphones for 30 or 40 kids in an orphanage in a shabby neighborhood in Petrozavodsk. None of the kids spoke English. But their eyes shone during our music and their faces - some of them scarred by abuse, some already hardened by misfortune and doubt - glowed with enjoyment. After we played they clamored for our autographs - including Sherry's, Charlie's and Keith's - and presented us with stuffed animals they had made themselves. I particularly remember little Slava, with his checked shirt buttoned at the neck, who said nothing but shook our hands over and over with a broad smile, and Olga, with black eyes and black hair held under a black headband, who led the other children in a gleeful friendship song for us.
We had done something for these children. We had brought a measure of relief to their day, and certainly of fun. And perhaps we had encouraged them to believe that more was possible in this world than remaining orphans without families to love them.
If this was our gift to them, they returned it in full measure. They reminded us that the world beats with a human heart, and that there is hope as long as there are children.
Hope is a good thing. We'll carry it with us from now on.