The event I'm going to tell you about and that meant so much for me
(as seen from my current point of view) happened in 1999, when I was
about 14. So let's say first a few words about me in that age, as
well as the atmosphere in the world of pop-music and musical
mainstream for young people in Czech Republic in the 90's in general.
I was just a normal teen. I grew up on a small village, where I lived
with my parents and my older brother, that has later left our home to
get some job in Prague. Due to some of my physical handicaps I was a
bit introvert and didn't have many friends amongst young kids from
the neighbourhood. So I liked to stay at home reading books, watching
TV (especially the musical TV charts) and listening music. I've spent
hours sitting in front of my CD-player with radio, tuning one station
after another and searching for my favourites songs. I've got that
CD-player as a gift from my brother, as well as a lot of CDs with the
music I liked. My bro was even more into pop-music than me, he used
to organize summer outdoor parties for his schoolmates & friends
from all around the region, when he was in his 16's till 19's, so he
had everytime an access to more news at musical scene than me, a
little kid.
The 90's in the Czech Republic were just a time of loads of music of
various genres everywhere. The pop-music and dance music from the
west (especially from Germany, Netherlands and Belgium) spread its
way throughout the Europe eastwards, into the countries of the former
„Eastern block“. And it was really successful here – the radio
stations were playing it 24/7, TV stations broadcasted those TV
charts and lots of programmes about music for teens, movie clips from
the boybands & girlbands from the U.S. & UK, there were disco
clubs starting to occur even in the small towns, the teens could
finally buy loads of fancy magazines about music, and of course it
was the time of quite huge concerts and musical shows of the
celebrities from the west that everyone wanted to see „live“,
simply because of the fact that they never had such a chance before.
It was mostly a German magazine for the teens called BRAVO!, who was
involved in these shows and organized them. But despite of the fact
that pop-music was everywhere it wasn't cheap at all – the average
cost of the CD was about 700 CZK, and that was too much for us kids
without any income. But we didn't care, and if we didn't have enough
money for buying a CD (or we were waiting too long for a release of a
new album) we simply „ripped“ a song from a radio station that
played it and copied it from one tape to another, regardless of the
bad quality the recording had.
So that was the time I grew up in. But as I mentioned before,
visiting huge musical events was nothing for me in my teen age. Much
more I liked to watch them on TV, as well as watch musical
celebrities being awarded for their success, no matter where this
success or the awarding event took place. So I was quite happy when
one of our TV stations announced the broadcast of the World Music
Awards from Monte Carlo (Monaco) in 1999. It was a chance for me to
watch my favourites artists not only in charts and clips as usual.
And this was the first time I spotted a name of some Russian artist
amongst others in the TV schedule. But I didn't care yet. Actually, I
thought it was a pseudonym of an unknown artist from the West who
only wanted to differ from the others. Could I be mistaken more?
So I've been watching the WMA '99 on TV. The event itself was nice
and festive, but on the other hand there was nothing that would
differ it from other events of this kind. The celebrities from all
around the world were switching on the stage, singing their songs,
taking their awards over and saying their thank-you speeches... I
even had to search for their names before I wrote this post, just to
remind myself that there was e.g. Ricky Martin, Britney Spears or
Modern Talking. I simply forgot them right the moment they went out
of sight.
But there was one artist whose name and performance I didn't forget.
It was that Russian, his name was Philipp Kirkorov. Actually, what
were the things that made him so different from others, except his
name and origin? Firstly, he was the one who tried to show at least
some choreography to the audience. He chose a song with a significant
piano motive, that was written by him especially for this event, and
unlike other artists he really seemed to enjoy his performance.
Secondly – the contrast between his unostentative image and the
image of his dancers in fancy red costumes. So to speak – there was
a “grey mouse” with nice eyes, voice and smile, without any
make-up, sophisticated hair style or luxurious costume, and that
mouse has sold 2 million albums in Russia for the past year, they
said. Unbelievable – and this was only one on the list of his
successes and achievements. Therefore the “mouse” was awarded in
Monaco, too. A similar contrast could be seen in his thank-you
speech, too: it was a mixture of self-esteem and pride with a big
gratitude towards the audience, he wasn't afraid to show his
emotions. He literally said that people in Russia love traditions, so
he will do his best to make a tradition of himself being awarded like
that again.
Well, the broadcast was over, I turned the TV off and went to bed as
usual. I couldn't get more informations about Philipp Kirkorov yet
since our media were strictly western-orientated and there was almost
no connection to the internet in our country these days. So I
resigned for some time and kept on listening to the music from the
west as always. But after some period of time the TV station repeated
the record of that event and I've watched it again, this time only
because of Philip Kirkorov, not the other artists.
And time went by, I went to the high school and then to university. I
almost stopped listening current pop-music, watching TV shows and
charts and buying those magazines for teens. I've had a bunch of my
favourites artists and I've kept listening to their music over and
over again. As I became more familiar with computers and the internet
connection spread all over our country I recalled Philipp's name once
and tried to search for it. So I revealed that he's still alive,
still keeps on singing the best he can – but mostly in his almost native
Russian langauge, not the English he tried to use at WMA in Monaco in
'99. I even listened a few of his songs for a while, but it was just
this language barrier that has stopped my further interest on him and
his music. I wasn't willing to learn Russian language yet because my
head was stuffed with all that English, German and French I was
taught at school. I had no further interest to add Russian to my
language skills. This country itself was far beyond my interest, so I
paid attention to it only in our geography and history school lessons
and almost immediately forgot what I learned. I kept on ignoring
everything that was happening eastwards from our borders with
Slovakia. Almost everyone around me was acting like that, mostly
because of the memories of the bad political experiences with Russia.
I was too young for having such memories, but I was just going with
the flow. Everyone in our country since the 90's was happy that the
kids do not need to learn Russian at school anymore, and everyone
hoped that the English or German the kids were forced to learn
instead will bring them a better luck.
But the time went on again. I finished my high school and university
studies, went through some hard times in my life lately... I'm not a
kid anymore, next year I'm gonna be 30. I still keep on refusing to
listen to current pop-music. I'm fed up with the TV shows where the
singers use the playback and look very similar to each other, as well
as their music sounds like that. I do not trust a proverb that “there
is a brilliant musician in every Czech” anymore. But I still like
the music I grew up with, so I'm searching my memories as well as the
web and I'm trying to do some time-travelling. And that's how
Philipp's name has come to my mind once again, after those long years
of ignoring. So I went to his new website... and that moment at the
beginning of June this year started a chain reaction of events and
changes in my life that still continues until now. Let's summarize it
a bit:
Firstly I was impressed by a change of Philipp's image. That “grey
mouse” from the stage of Monte Carlo with long brown hair and nice
eyes and smile was gone. It is obvious that Philipp has been
experimenting with his appearance throughout the years and started to
pay more attention to the fashion and styling and everything that
comes up with the visual part of the musical art. He even seems being
perfectionist in this to me – but I like it and appreciate it. In
fact, there's no wonder he did that – if you know your voice and
singing could hardly get better you can pay more attention to how do
you look like on the stage or in public. So did he, when he started
to perform in really fancy and expensive costumes and wear a similar
kind of clothes in public, changed his hairstyle, got a beard etc. He
went older, so now he looks more mature and experienced than then,
but still isn't afraid to experiment even more and bring new trends
in fashion to his homeland. Someone could say that his style is a bit
exaggerative, with all these golden uniforms, male skirts and
fireworks on the stage... But watching an aging star starting to look
dull would be much worse for the audience as well as for him, because
he really seems being devoted to the music. So when I stopped gazing
at the photos on his website I've immediately searched for a
wallpaper for my laptop with one of them. Whoever has come with his
“mariner-like” styling deserves at least an applause.
Secondly: Philipp's website is full of his music that can anyone
listen to immediately. And now I have more time to go through it more
intensively, one song by another as Philipps' years on the stage went
by, followed by well-deserved success and another line of awards. And
of course, these songs still are in Russian. So if I wanted to
understand their lyrics I simply had to step over my own prejudices.
I did. I went from “Why the hell should I bother myself with
azbuka?” to buying a nice Russian textbook for the money I saved
for food for the next three days. I took it as a challenge to myself,
and a little bit as a punishment for those years of calculated
ignorance of everything that had something in common with Russia. And
of course, there is a bit of controversy in showing some interest
about Russia in our country these days again – but I don't care, my
life isn't meant to be spent in a fear from the political situation.
So I keep on learning Russian by myself, day by day, struggling with
Russian alphabet and grammar rules that are a bit different from my
native Czech (although the vocabularies are quite similar to each
other since they are both Slavic languages). And apart from that I
keep on listening to Philipp's music, checking his news on Twitter
and watching his videos on YouTube, briefly said I'm acting just like
thousands of his fans all around the Russia and the countries where
he is known and famous.
Do I have a right to judge his style of music?
It's a pop in his most-mainstream way, the Wikipedia states „with
various Western influences“,
but in my opinion Philipp doesn't let himself being limited or
orientated only westwards and takes what he likes wherever it comes
from. His version of pop is more orchestral than we here are used to
know, but it still sounds pretty good and works even better with the
style of presentation he chose. If I wouldn't like it I wouldn't
waste my time listening, of course. And so the people in Russia do,
what I find amazing – here in Czech Republic is usual that the
singers who have started their career or were on its top 15 years ago
are almost forgotten now. They are grateful for a chance to perform
on small-town festivities or keep finding their luck in that huge
range of musicals we have here or even in TV shows that are balancing
between boredom, obscenity and awkwardness and nobody pays much
attention to them, but that's all for them.
Philipp in contrary
managed to stay on the most top of the musical scene in such a big
country like Russia (with all its neighbourhood and even the
countries all around the world) for such a long period of time. Maybe
he even put this top a nice bit upwards. So he can make a concert
tour all around the Russia and for the people it's worth to spend
their money for the tickets, regardless of the fact that he was in
their town just a month ago. They keep on attending his shows, that
are always sold-out, they give him flowers, applause and sing his
songs along (I wouldn't believe it if he wouldn't share his own-made
videos from the stage on his Twitter channel)... So he must be very
talented and psychically resistant to everything that comes up with
his fame.
Some people keep blaming him of singing too much songs that
are not his own and he took them from other artists (mostly from the
Eurovision song contest participants). But I don't mind it at all
since I do not watch Eurovision and I like the way he brings these
songs into a new life and gives them a new meanings and travels with
them all around the Russia to the places where they couldn't be heard
from their own performers. And sometimes are his versions even better
than the original ones – e.g. his version of Lady Gaga's
„Americano”,
as he performed it on this year's song contest “New Wave” in
Jurmala (in Latvia), was stunning.
Well, let's say some words to a nice finish: I re-discovered Philipp
Kirkorov and his music for myself and I've made some changes in my
life according to this new interest of mine. It's not only in
learning Russian, having a Twitter account or writing for a blog (in
Czech and English, that I haven't spoken & written for years). I
started to be interested in the life in Russia, its culture,
geography and mentality of the people living there in general. One
reason for this is that I don't want to end up with the feeling that
I do not know nothing about the country of such importance. And the
second one is that I simply want to understand why do people react on
Philipp, his songs and performances and his behaviour in general as
they do. He went iconical for some of them, and for some went
controversal due to some bad reactions towards journalists and
critics that he didn't avoid in his past. As a disinterested fan I
can hardly tell what went wrong these days it was happening – maybe
it was a result of combination of some psychical difficulties in
Philipp's personal life (the pressure put on him to be always as best
as possible must be enormous and exhausting) that met with a normal
amount of journalists' stupidity (and by “normal” I mean the
Russian standards, not the tiny Czech ones).
The people around me
know I hate this stupidity and silly behaviour since I finished my
university studies right in journalism & similar branches and
started getting some experiences in the things that come up with it.
I feel sick only from the idea that I should have been forced to go
and ask Philipp (or anyone else) that certain kind of question he is
being asked and their only purpose is to harm the person the
journalist is asking and show how “brilliant” the journalist
himself is. There's enough on the fact that I have to read these
questions in the media and think about the sad truth that everyone
takes them seriously, as well as the answers they get. So I think I
understand it in some part. But I hope these problems that Philipp
had are now over – as a fan I can't do anything else than wish him
the best luck, so he could give as great performances as he is doing
now for another more period of time and enjoy it as well, so his
audience could do the same.
Maybe there is another meaning in the fact that my interest has
turned towards Philipp Kirkorov and Russia now: maybe I should pay
more attention to things I refuse to do, watch or hear right now.
They can simply return someday in the future – and this time I can
welcome them with a nice portion of enthusiasm.
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