Covering a Cult Classic: A remake of a Russian singer’s album is a hit in the U.S.

By Sergey Chernov

Published: August 22, 2008

Despite the fact Alina Simone’s album “Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware” is not written by her, nor is it sung in English, the U.S. singer/songwriter of Russian origin has received positive reviews in top U.S. publications, including the New Yorker.

Released earlier this month, the album is a collection of songs by the late Siberian folk-punk legend Yanka. whose music Simone first heard on a tape given to her by a Russian street musician in Brighton Beach, New York’s Russian enclave.

“Never did I expect such a response,” Simone said in a recent e-mail interview. “I thought I was veering away from the world of indie-pop to do, essentially, an art project. Instead the mainstream press is embracing it.”

Simone was taken to the United States when she was one in 1975. Her parents left Kharkov in the former Soviet Union as political refugees. Now Brooklyn-based, Simone made a break in releasing her own English-language songs, such as those on her 2007 debut album “Placelessness,” to perform and record a selection of songs written by Yanka.

Singer and songwriter Yanka (Yana Dyagileva) was born in Novosibirsk and became popular in the Soviet underground music scene in the late 1980s. She played underground concerts and distributed her songs on home-produced tapes. Tragically, Yanka died in May 1991, aged 24, and never saw her music released commercially in her lifetime.

“Yanka’s music is incredibly compelling,” Simone said. “It has an intense kind of intimacy and immediacy because the music is so raw and heartfelt. Personally, I think it is difficult not to become interested in Yanka’s music once you’ve heard it. And her life, which was in equal measures heroic and tragic, gives the listener all the more reason to pay attention.”

Some of the songs that Yanka originally performed, backed by acoustic guitar or sometimes by a punk band with distorted guitars, have been rearranged on Simone’s album.

“In some cases I added very little, singing the songs live and solo as Yanka did. But many of the songs have been slowed down or sped up and fleshed out with lush arrangements and instrumentation that includes trumpet, cello, bajo sexto and electric 12-string guitar.”

Last year, Simone gave the taste of her Yanka covers to Russian audiences by doing a small tour with performances in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Archangelsk.

“I felt it would be wrong or simply cowardly to avoid the criticism of those who best understand Yanka’s music and the context in which it was made,” she said. Although media reviews were largely favorable, she admitted some opposition from die-hard Yanka fans.

“There are obviously many Yanka fans who feel that to touch her songs is practically blasphemous,” she said. On the other hand, there are fans who thought Simone changed the songs too radically.

“There are also Russians who are unhappy about my singing Yanka’s songs with my American accent. But being who I am, I could never satisfy these listeners. I think some dissent and friction is actually a good thing. Art should be a conversation starter, not a conversation stopper.”

In the United States, singing in Russian proved not to be an obstacle for either critics or listeners, Simone said.

“It has only helped attract interest, even in very unlikely places,” she said. “Howard Wolfson, chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, wrote to me to personally order a copy of my solo demo versions of the Yanka cover album.”

Simone is planning to continue performing Yanka cover material in the next three months, and her next album of original material is already about 80 percent recorded.

“It is drastically different from both the Yanka album and my previous work, featuring Brazilian drumming, Cuban-style trumpet, vocal loops and more ambitious arrangements,” she said.