Songs by Bulat Okudzhava

About Okudzhava

Okudzhava's songs revived a human quality and a natural simplicity of tone which has long been inherent in Russian speech, song and poetry. The process of renewing the tone and of humanizing the melodics of speech touched, at that time (the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s), many spheres of Russian culture. Prepared in the sphere of folklore by songs of labour camps, which were spread around the country after the death of Stalin, by songs of students, campers, and mountainers, this process appeared most strongly in the works of poet singers (Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksandr Galich, Vladimir Vysotsky, Novella Matveeva and others), also in theater and film. Reform of the theatrical tone began with Alexandr Volodin's play, "Factory Girl", performed in 1956.

...But in general there is nothing romantic, unusual, or exotic in the creation of songs. Everything is very ordinary, everything is painstaking, and nothing is as picturesque as it seems afterwards. It's just work - work which is often wearisome because there is always something to change... - B. S. Okudzhava