понедельник, 9 марта 2009 г.

Ermitage-"River Lena" (neofolk)

I continue to add to my music video collection in www.youtube.com new videos. The last I downloaded only on yesterday evening. I dedicated it to the one of the most beautiful and mysterious siberian rivers-river Lena.

About the artist:

Ermitage - Biography
Produced by Leslie Mandoki, Russian Memories was the orchestrated ethno-pop album project for Michail Gorbachevs aid organization Green Cross International Global Sounds for a Better Understanding Music and Politics in the European Haus.

The album is a combination of traditional Russian songs played by an orchestra mixed with some synthesizer arrangements. About a third of the songs feature choral female vocals and or Gregorian-like chanting. Other tracks like Paranya and Petropolis which feature the Russian folk group Baba Yaga, sound strikingly similar to Ivan Kupala. The overall effect of the album is to draw up memories of the more glorious days, of the former Soviet Union.

About the river Lena

The Lena is the 10th-longest river in the world, flowing 2,734 miles across the Far East regions of Russia, forming near Lake Baykal and flowing northeast to the Arctic Ocean. It empties in a 250-mile-wide delta at the Laptev Sea.
The river is home to many kinds of animal and plant life but only for a few months out of the year; the rest of the time, the river is frozen solid. Among the animals that call this wetland home during the warmer months are ducks, geese, sandpipers, terns, and gulls. A fish called the cisco is thought to come only from this wetland. Marine mammals live there as well.

The river flooded its banks in a big way in 2001, causing some of the worst flooding ever seen in Siberia. Hundreds of thousands of people were affected. Scientists had to blow up iceblocks that were blocking the river's flow in some place.

The Laptev Sea, into which the Lena River empties, helps keep the temperature of the world's northernmost regions regulated, through large blocks of ice that from from the Lena's outflow and then break off when the temperature rises at the river's mouth, drifting off to cool.

Have a nice journey!)))

4 комментария:

Chernevog комментирует...

Do you know what instruments were played on this. The flute sounds like a version of the birch wood flutes that are common in many Slavic countries, and there is a low droning sound in the background that sounds like another Slavic folk instrument, which is called a "fujara" by the Slovaks, and has other names for similar instruments in other nations. I think a similar instrument in Russia is called the Kalyuka. But I can hear both in this piece, I think

lastochka комментирует...

It seems to me like that (it's kalyuka or duduka is more common name).

Chernevog комментирует...

I thought the duduka was more like an oboe, a short double reeded instrument. It is one of the oldest instruments known. As old as 3000 years.


I thought the kalyuka was a end blown fipple overtone flute. These can get pretty large in order to get extremely low sounds.

The slovak version the fujara is huge and has two or three sections. The main section is about three to four feet long, with another shorter tube attached to the top and the end that is blown into is about halfway between the top and bottom of the instrument. playing it looks almost like playing a saxaphone.

When you hold a fujara to play it, part of the tube can be higher than the top of the head of the player, and the sound can go from a very low bass tone, to a very high tone. It is an ancient shepherds instrument. The low sound can be heard for miles, and it was sometimes used by shepherds to communicate with others at a distance.


Overtone flutes sometimes have no fingerholes at all. The fujara has three, very widely spaced. Often, the kalyuka has no finger holes and the different notes are played by changing the breath as one plays it, while holding a finger at the hole at the end of the flute farthest away from the mouth and changing the amount of that end hole in the flute that is covered by the finger. Simular birch overtone flutes are used in Karelian music as well as in a many Scandanavian folk music cultures.


It is a very difficult instrument to play.

Chernevog комментирует...

Anyway, no matter what instruments, it is a very nice piece of music