Air with Olga Arefieva on "Echo Moskvy" Radio station, March 1, 1998.
Host - Natella Boltyanskaya
Question: Please meet singer-writer Olga Arefieva. May I call you so?
O.A. I suppose, you are more used to it this way, so I guess you may.
Q. Six years ago, when I heard you for the very first time in the Rock Cabaret, it laid absolutely fantastic impression on me. I was astonished by the unity of a very pure voice, very good lyrics, and very interesting [musical] adaptation. I heard you again later on the radio station "Ala" (*), which was still open at that time. And then you went into the variety?
O.A. No, it was then and it is now that I work with my own music, my own songs, sing them. Maybe, I became much more popular, began playing with a band, because my songs presuppose playing with a band. I can sing some songs accompanying myself with a guitar, but it still won't look like bard song. Melodic is not the same, structure of the verse is also slightly different.
Q. Your playing with a group - what is it - the need for a more diverse accompaniment or is it about different intonations?
O.A. Yes, different intonations on the one hand, and on the other, each song has its own hidden theme. When I'm playing the guitar, I can't at the same time play several other themes, voices of other instruments. As an example of it (since we've got such a musicologist conversation going on) we can listen to a song right now.
Q. (contented) Yeah.
O.A. Cellist Peter Akimov made these additional melodies especially vivid. Listen to the theme, which the cello is playing, and tell me whether the song can exist without it. And it will probably become more clear what we are talking about here.
Sounds the song "She Made A Step"
Q. She died because she longed? How do you combine in yourself the lyrical hero and the author's identity? Naturally, a creative person many times in his life has to die because he longs for love.
O.A. I've already given this song another title - "She Made A Step". It has a funny story connected to it. When we had shot a video on this song, one TV-guy comes to another and says: "This is Arefieva's video. "She died."" - "What, Arefieva died?!" No, Arefieva stayed alive! That's why the song is renamed, and those who will listen to it carefully, will understand that the song is about life, not death. There was a book by Pavel Vezhinov called "The Barrier". The song is about that girl, the heroine of the book.
Q. Olya, one can say that you are a person of a certain way of life, it expressing itself in everything - your attitude to the surrounding reality, your songs. The fact that you became more popular, does it impose any responsibility on you? I mean image.
O.A. I haven't changed much since then. Maybe I learned to communicate better. As a child I was very shy and now I'm getting over it - I have more friends, I'm trying to forgive their weaknesses more easily (the more friends you have, the more numerous are the weaknesses). These are probably all changes in me.
Q. Is your work making you a living?
O.A. Yes.
Q. How many concerts a month do you have?
O.A. The question is very broad, for there were periods when I performed very seldom, made four-month break periods or even longer. Lately, it turns out that I have concerts each week In a few days there will be a festival in CHA [Central House of Artists] called "Singing Me". We organized this festival by our own strength and invited singing girls to take part in it. The festival is dated to the Women's Day. First there will be my solo concert for which we also invited many guests, and on the next day we'll have the festival per se. The criteria for participants' selection were pretty strict - we wanted every girl to have a really brilliant personality, to be in fact worth something, have a really great voice and ability to master it. I'd like to have more participants, but for now there are eight girls for whom we won't have to be ashamed. First of all, apart from me, there will be Inna Zhelannaya. According to different mass media polls, she was twice named among the best female vocalists of our country - in 1992 and 1996 - but along with this Inna is for some reason unnoticeable. Such strange, enigmatic Inna Zhelannaya. But she is an undoubtedly outstanding phenomenon, maybe even the headliner of the festival.
Q. It's very interesting... (with muse and surprise)
O.A. I think you absolutely should invite her here some time. There will also be the band "Rada and Blackthorn", Katya Messerschmidt and the band "Good-Bye, Motorcycle", Yelena Frolova from Yelena Kamburova's theater, Yulya Teunikova (absolutely unknown but very promising girl), Oksana Chush (this is her stage name) ["Chush" in Russian means "nonsense", "baloney"], and the band "Active Forces of Adventurers", Marina Bareshenkova, Natalya Knyazhinskaya accompanied by Odyssey Bogusevich. I haven't yet seen the last three persons for myself, just heard their recordings and saw their pictures.
Q. One of my favorite questions is about self-appraisal. There are two poles. One is the look in the mirror with an aspiration I'm such a genius, and the second - as it is in the old joke, I'm just f*cking striking the keys here.
O.A. I've mentioned already that since early childhood I was a girl with many complexes, very shy and underrated. All this helped me in later years not to catch a star fever. I have a reasonable balance.
Q. Do you live like you please, or have the word Must appeared in your life?
O.A. I always knew the word Must. I always got good grades in school. I always tried to be good. But this is inside, apart from must. I've never had that rock-n-roll mess in my life. I live a very quiet, hard-working, and maybe too modest life.
Q. Tell me, is there any difference in your perception between I Want and I Can? What is it for you personally?
O.A. Yes, sometimes I can't do the things I want. I'm not quite successful with recordings. Almost all my albums are live concerts. In the album "Batakakumba", though, all voice was recorded from first take, and the rest of the work in the sound studio was with the instruments.
Q. Please tell me, don't you feel that you are a stranger in a circle of similar to you people, because you are too quiet for rock-n-roll, and for singers-writers you are a person who took different path in the musical sense. Who are the people of your blood group? Maybe among classicists of this or that genre.
O.A. It wouldn't be correct to say that I'm a stranger. To the contrary, I belong in the rock-n-roll circle as well as in Kamburova's theater. Yelena Kamburova is a person whom I greatly respect. She is much more exquisite, lofty, estranged from the ground than me. This is one pole. The other maybe anything up to Janis Joplin and Nina Hagen. I won't name any Russian names not to hurt anybody's feelings. All those whom I invited to the festival, I love them all. And I'm proud of them, and appreciate them all. The only person who won't be present at this festival is Nastya Poleva, simply because she lives in St.Pete and we are not that rich to bring out a band from St.Pete. And there also won't be Zhanna Aguzarova because she is in some different worlds now. We decided to place the emphasis on the young to help them, though it turned out that they are not that plentiful.
Q. I've been for some time trying to formulate for myself the difference between bards and vocalists. I think it lies in the fact that for the latter it doesn't make any difference in what language they are singing. And how is it for you? Does the notional substance matter to you?
O.A. Yes, it is always there, but there are such songs in English, in which the notional substance penetrates through the language, that's why I can't say that I don't consider singing in English. I immediately recalled the song "Summertime". Even if we won't know the text of this song, nothing will change. The text is about summer, cotton, your father is rich, your mother is beautiful, and you don't cry. In reality this song contains lots of anguish, passion, faithful love. In Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" a black woman neglected with a child by her white lover lulls her baby to sleep, crying. All this is in the song. We might be not aware of what is Summertime in general, but emotion in all its plenitude comes through the song.
Q. That being that lives inside you and is called your creative Self. Is it also you or is it an absolutely different person with whom you sometimes feel uncomfortable?
O.A. Myself and creative Self are not the same. Creative Self is more cosmic, more elevated, more incognizable. I'm, of course, more material-minded, more ordinary, with lots of weaknesses and everyday worries. I've often heard from people that you on the stage and you in real life don't have anything in common, you are unrecognizable, one can't even understand that this is you. For me principal moments in my life are when earthy me dies away and slightly touches that cosmic and elevated. This is enough for me so that the rest of my life I undertake superhuman efforts, endure unbelievable difficulties. Only for the sake of this, and not for the money and glory. To play the guitar you have to have a guitar and so on. All this is just means, and the goal is to get into this high spirit for just a moment.
Sounds the song "Do Something"
Q. When a person consciously begins to do some creative work he sets for himself some milestones. For instance, in a year I want to achieve this, in ten years - that. Do you personally have this kind of delimitation?
O.A. I have one big milestone. When I record everything I can die with a serene heart.
Q. That's a pretty nice milestone...
O.A. But it doesn't change anything in my life. I can't record ANYTHING, leave alone EVERYTHING.
Q. There must be a lot of pirate recordings.
O.A. There are pirate recordings, but they are useless. You know for yourself what is the quality of such albums, they record concerts. It is true that the music is an informational structure. Quality doesn't make any difference for those who are interested in the structure itself. But still I would like it very much if the recordings were of high quality, so that you could listen to them and at the same time relax and enjoy them, and not only receive information.
Q. You must have some supporters because looking at you and having known you for some time I understand it perfectly well that you won't go and ask anybody for money. Or do you have to do that occasionally?
O.A. There was once that we asked for money and we got it. When the recording of "Batakakumba" was approximately half done, we were let down by our partner who was paying for the sound studio. He just disappeared having left us with the debts. Then I had to ask for money so that we could finish that recording.
Q. And are there any patrons who come at their own will?
O.A. They are not exactly patrons. There is a close circle of very dear to me people who do whatever they can to help me. It is worth much more than any money. Whatever happens, there's always somebody I can turn to. If I need this and this, I call so and so. One gives me a tenantless apartment for a year when I don't have anywhere to live; another helps me to get into a hospital when I'm sick; still another helps with something else that is also very important. Being only human, I need different common things that no money can buy. It would be an immense sum of money if tried to buy everything.
Q. And is Moscow also a milestone for you? Are you going to go anywhere else? Or is your place here?
O.A. I guess it is here. Moscow wasn't a milestone because I got here in spite of my own will. It just happened this way. There were several moments in my life that just happened. It happened that I had to go to the musical college, to do that I had to drop out of the university where I was a good student. I left after my sophomore year, only three years having left to getting higher education, and in college in four years I'd only get secondary education. Later I entered the Gnesins' Institute, studied for four more years there. It took many, many years before I could appease my parents with a higher education diploma. It was a shock for them when I dropped out of the university because it was very important for them. But I simply couldn't do otherwise. The same was about Moscow. For me, my place is where my friends and my acquaintances are, that's why I think that here I'm in the heart of the target, everything is here.
Sounds the song "Night-Trap"
Q. On what stage is your creative process right now? Is it a creative autumn or a difficult spring?
O.A. For me it's always chronic lingering spring. A beginning that cannot turn into a mean.
Q. Do you have to pay any price for the opportunity of creative self-expression?
O.A. I guess I've paid that price when on all the crossroads was choosing music. I was always told that I could lose music at any moment. Choose - money or music. I chose music. Family or music. Chose music. And so on. While I keep choosing music, this is my price.
Q. Getting into high philosophic circles, you are always offered a choice - something or music. Do you feel at those moments that you are being tempted?
O.A. Music for me is so important that I raced through it. If I didn't go to the musical college, I don't know what would've become of me.
Q. You said that on the stage you don't recognize yourself. Do you give or do you take?
O.A. I take more. I mean, give. After a concert I feel as if I was fagged out.
Q. How do you fill up the energy afterwards?
O.A. Going to the nature, sleeping, just relaxing.
O.A. Though you have a solid foundation in your life, how long can a person live feeling uncomforted? I have a feeling that you are not at peace with this world.
O.A. "A poet must be hungry!" (laughs). Why do you think that a poet must feel bad? He can feel good and write about it. But everybody likes it when a poet is miserable. Let it be so, let's play stock-phrases.
Q. How often in this life do you feel good?
O.A. Often.
Q. Are you a happy person?
O.A. Yes.
Q. What is your dream?
O.A. I'd like that not only I die when everything is recorded, but that the work would live on. To write a song is like giving birth to a child. That's it, all the nice things are behind, now it's only diapers, studios, rehearsals. While I can write songs, I feel that I'm needed on this earth. I feel pleasure creating a song; the rest is a technical question.
Q. How often do you exploit the ones you love with your work? In your life it's all subdued by the principle idea, and what about lives of the ones who are close to you, your friends, beloved ones?
O.A. Those people who surround me need myself and not my music. This may sound strange, paradoxical, but for me this is very important. I guess they love and understand my music, too, all the more so since the closest people are those with whom I constantly rub shoulders. Of course, it's all tied to the music. I'd like to be needed just as an ordinary, earthy girl Olga.