February 27, 2010
Edward Anatolevich Hill
Our own Justin E. H. Smith has unearthed much information about yesterday's video. From Justin's blog:
The man singing is Edward Hill, also known as Eduard Khil', or, better yet, Эдуард Хиль. According to his Russian Wikipedia page, Hill was born in Smolensk in 1934, and finished his studies at the Leningrad Conservatory in 1960. By 1974 he had been named a People's Artist of the USSR, and in 1981 he was awarded the Order of the Friendship of Peoples. He is best known for his interpretations of the songs of the Soviet composer, Arkadii Ostrovskii. As for the peculiar name, I could find no information, but imagine that he is descended from the English elite that had established itself in western Russian cities by the 17th century. He is not a defector of the Lee Harvey Oswald generation. He is entirely Russian.
The song he is interpreting, "I Am So Happy to Finally Be Back Home," is an Ostrovskii composition, and it is meant to be sung in the vokaliz style, that is to say sung, but without words. I have seen a number of comments online, ever since a flurry of interest in Hill began just a few days ago, to the effect that this routine must have been meant as a critique of Soviet censorship, but in fact vokaliz was a well established genre, one that seems close in certain respects to pantomime.
Recent interest in Hill has to do with the perceived strangeness, the uncanniness, the surreal character of this performance. There is indeed something uncanny about a lip-synch to a song with no words, and his waxed face and hair helmet certainly do not carry over well. But once one does a bit of research, one learns that the number was not conceived out of some desire to cater to the so-bad-it's-good tastes of the Western YouTube generation, but in fact was meant to please --to genuinely please-- Soviet audiences who were capable of placing this routine, this man, and this song into a familiar context. The audiences would recognize, for example, that the same number had been performed by the Azerbaidzhani singer Muslim Magomaev in a film from the early 1960s, The Blue Spark:
More here.
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Comments
Justin,
what a good piece. After watching the original which you posted here I felt that Ed Hill's version is perhaps comforting and a reminder of a happier time now in the past--that can't be gone back to. He manages to creat all that sensation in what to others may seem ridiculous. Its like he's sharing that momement "Remember this? When we were happy, and that even this nothing moment at that time--now means so much to us when we look back?" Those who shared that time--I think would react with much nostalgia at Ed Hill's piece and in fact feel comforted, happy and then as he exits sad.
But both versions made me HAPPY!!!!
Maniza
Posted by: maniza | Feb 27, 2010 11:11:37 AM
One was quite enough, thank you.
Posted by: J.Hawkins | Feb 27, 2010 11:18:02 AM
The early 60s movie version is sweet, perhaps a little cheesy, but not ridiculous. The 70s TV version is completely ridiculous, just as 70s TV versions of popular music in the West were often completely ridiculous.
Posted by: Burple | Mar 1, 2010 11:14:02 PM
The Edward Hill version may be perceived by some as a "tongue-in-cheek" mocking of Soviet Realism genre in forcibly happy songs, movies, and novels of the day. Even though vocaliz is a traditional genre (think Rachmaninoff vocaliz), the over-the-top loopy happiness of Hill's performance might be viewed as a satire on Social propaganda. But on the other hand, so much of straightforwardly ridiculous Soviet kitsch was perceived as tongue-in-cheek. People were starving for some truthful reflection on Soviet reality and were often seeing satire and mockery where there were none.
Muslim Magomaev was a much more talented and much more popular singer than Edward Hill, that might explain the better interpretation of the song. He just "gets" it better.
Posted by: Marina Lomazov | Mar 2, 2010 5:29:53 PM
I can't find the referenced Wikipedia page in either English or Russian. Can you possibly provide a link?
Posted by: Bonnie | Mar 3, 2010 1:15:24 PM
Seems his">http://www.krestianin.ru/articles/10607.php&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhg2tvqemCehT3GZv0d28S7gx3EAEA">his heritage is Spanish, not English.
Posted by: Randall Gremillion | Mar 3, 2010 1:59:45 PM
Early version by Obodzinsky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHf9BJdgdBo
Wikipedia article about Eduard Khil':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Khil
Posted by: Fluffy | Mar 6, 2010 8:11:58 AM
Thank you for researching and posting this Justin, you've shed some insight on an otherwise mysterious cultural phenomenon (at least for me).
Your analysis inspired me to write the performance "lyrics": http://www.thoughtskipper.com/2010/03/what-do-you-mean-hes-not-singing-just.html
And the sing-along version here: ;-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY
Posted by: Skipper | Mar 6, 2010 10:38:56 PM
A slight correction: "Blue Spark" (Голубой Огонек) isn't a movie, it's a musical TV show. It's still going on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Blue_Light
Posted by: scanislav | Mar 7, 2010 2:53:08 PM
check this out
Posted by: stacey | Mar 15, 2010 7:32:59 PM
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