The Shalakush folk choir and its children’s companion, the exemplary folk song ensemble “Subboteya”, are preparing for a big tour with the program “Chorus and rap folklore”.
Pupils of the Nyandomsk School of Arts, a branch of which operates in Shalakusha, proposed to combine the impossible. The teachers picked up the original idea and even managed to get a presidential grant for the project – more than two million rubles. It sounds fantastic, but both musical genres have a lot in common: “There are elements of rap in a folk song. Take for example the song ‘Brigadier Varvara’, which was written during the war by Anna Pavlovna Puzanova, a teamster from the local collective farm,” says Lyubov Mitina, the choir’s artistic director. – “The brigadier is Varvara, the linkman is Tatyana, the herder is Katerina.”
The song is rhythmic and catchy – during the war it helped the collective farmers to stay united and feed the front. Team building, in a word. The new Shalakusha project is designed to unite the bearers of the song culture of the North and children who have just begun to study it: teenagers have already traveled with a folklore expedition through the villages, had a workshop on deciphering and learning songs, and now they are beginning classes at the rap school. Then the traditional hip-hop recitative will be transposed into lyrics and melodies from the repertoire of the Shalakusha folk choir.
How could such a unique project be born in the backwoods? Shalakusha is the most musical village in the Arkhangelsk region. The choir was created here in the 1930s, and in the most difficult times for people it remained the spiritual basis that helped them to survive. It is not by chance that today the whole Shalakusha sings – every family has at least two or three people involved in the choir. Ahead of the singing children and adults are recording an album in the style of rap-folklore and touring the region. Meanwhile, everyone in Pomorie is looking forward to seeing what will happen?
