Arcady Severny
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Arcady Severny (Zvezdin) (Аркадий Северный; Аркадий Дмитриевич Звездин) (March 12, 1939 - April 12, 1980) was a popular Leningrad (St. Petersburg) singer. He was very popular in the Soviet Union in the 1970s primarily because of his performances of anti-Soviet and prison songs. He wrote more than 1000 songs based on criminal folklore and literature. Severny worked with well known Russian jazz and restaurant musicians. He recorded more than 80 albums, both solo and orchestral.
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[edit] Early life
Severny was born Arcady Dmitrievich Zvezdin in the town of Ivanovo near Moscow. Contrary to popular belief, in his childhood years he was neither a hooligan nor a pupil with poor grades. On the contrary, he belonged to the so-called "golden youth" with his father occupying a senior position with the Ivanovo railroad. The young Arcady did well at school, and loved to play on a seven-string guitar. Thanks to a very good memory, he could perform a large number of songs. His older sister once gave him a thick copybook filled with texts of songs, including numerous prison songs; he quickly learned this peculiar repertoire and eagerly sang such songs in polite company.
After finishing school in 1957, Arcady left for St. Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Forest and Technical Academy (Timber College S.M.Kirova), and participated in amateur work, ensemble of students sang songs in English, and imitating Louie Armstrong. Having become completely engrossed in student’s amateur art, he did not study very diligently and after each term was on the verge of being expelled. Finally, he had to discontinue his studies for a while and took academic leave of absence.
[edit] First recordings
Once in the company of friends, Arcady sang about a dozen songs that he had recorded on tape. In 1963 his first recordings with a total recording time of 35-40 minutes were released. Upon receiving his degree in 1965, he was given an administrative job at SoyuzEksportLes (Wood Export Union). Nevertheless, working in an office environment was of little interest to him; he wanted to sing, and two years later destiny gave him his chance. In the summer of 1967, Arcady became acquainted with one Rudolf Fuchs, a person who recorded singers and songwriters on guitar. Fuchs had the idea of making the novice’s first album in the form of a refined hoax, specifically a non-existent radio program, which was allegedly broadcast on the airwaves. Severny performed prison songs on the radio at the request of the program’s listening audience.
There was good reason for Arcady choosing the pseudonym Severny. First of all, he wanted to lend more credibility to the artificial image of a prison singer, since many convicts were sent to prison in the north of Russia (‘severny’ is Russian for ‘northern’). Secondly, the pseudonym served its purpose as a conspiracy, since in those years one could have been sent to prison for giving underground concerts.
In any case, the fake radio program turned out to be a major success. The audience was intrigued not so much by the songs as by the question: how could such a program appear on Soviet radio? No one could even guess that it was a joke.
[edit] Popularity
In 1968, Arcady was taken off to the Soviet army where he served as lieutenant for a year in a helicopter regiment not far from St. Petersburg. Having demobilized, the singer learned that during the period of his mandatory service in the army, his popularity as a singer had grown considerably. He then received an invitation from producer Sergei Maklakov. Arcady performed his songs throughout the entire evening at Maklakov’s place. The result was 500 meters of recordings on the now outdated reel-to-reel that were quickly disseminated throughout the entire Soviet Union and eventually gave rise to the popularity of the performer’s prison songs. It was with great pleasure that music lovers all over the country listened to the singer’s slightly hoarse voice performing such revived songs as Roast Chicken, School of Ballet Dances, I Lived in Noisy Odesa, Mother, I’m In Love With A Pilot, Tram #10 Passed By, and many others. During the recording Arcady Severny would repeat In Odessa-, Back when I was in Odessa-, and so forth. Because of this, and of the stylized Odessa manner of performance of the songs, quite a few people believed that the singer himself was from Odessa.
[edit] Legacy
Severny managed to combine and concentrate practically the entire intonational lexicon of the "prison song" genre. Moreover, although it was understood that all this is a stylization, the genre remained one of the most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s in camouflage. One more circumstance that comes to mind while listening to the album: the official culture of the Soviet "stagnation" period was not only countered by the light non-conformism coming from the direction of the intelligentsia, but also by the dark culture of the criminal world. Unrecognized by the authorities as a singer, he was nevertheless a cult figure in the USSR with the entire country going mad over recordings of his private concerts. Russian criminal culture became an essential integral part of the greater Russian culture.
[edit] External links
- Northern Encyclopedia - Photos, songs in Mp3, art-projects about Arcady Severny, articles.
- severnij.dp.ua - recordings
