Small Armored Car Vs. Banality
An event took place, traditionally ignored by big-time TV channels and prestigious printed media, but enjoyed by people fond of good music. Ania Gerasimova, better known as Umka [name of an extremely sociable bear cub from a once popular Soviet animated cartoon titled “Umka Is Looking for a Friend” — Ed.], an excellent singer of the blues, visited Kyiv with several concerts.
Her pseudonym originates from her hippie youth when Umka wandered across the Soviet Union with her guitar, singing heartfelt ballads about roads, losses, freedom, and death. Back in the 1980s and nineties there were many such six-string samurai. Most were lost in dusty and nicotine-stained anonymity. Ania had what most others like her did not: a rich voice, a good education in the humanities, and an understanding that good music could not be made using the three chords of a typical street bard.
That was why Ania, unlike most others, did not adjust the underground thou-shalt-not-grub- for-money philosophy to her own status quo. Instead, she simply and without much ado proceeded to improve her talent as a blues singer, heretofore lacking public recognition. Actually, her progress in terms of vocal style and accompaniment was obvious two years ago, yet she has since made a real breakthrough, as evidenced by her concerts in Kyiv.
Her previous visit was very different, she kept a low profile and performed for a small friendly audience. This time also she mostly addressed her friends, but their number made it perfectly clear that Umka’s performances are more than a subculture, that people being far remote from any nonconformist trends are getting really interested. Whether this is good or bad is another matter, but what really matters is that her renditions bear every hallmark of creative maturity.
Umka is now a woman with a girlish figure, looking as fragile, with a pair of expressive eyes looking also a bit childish, a very strong voice, and she is accompanied by an excellent professional group. The ensemble is known as Umka and Bronievychok [Small Armored Car]. At the House of Artistes and especially at the Shelter Club their concert program was very well planned, skillfully building tension, and leaving the audience ecstatic. Sandpaper rough blues arrangements were interspersed with spicy and lazy reggae pieces, with old songs acquiring a new unheard-of might and new renditions matching them in every respect. Actually, there was nothing to do for a music critic. No flaws seemed to be present.
But this is probably where danger lurks. I can be wrong but Umka is about to enter the phase of mass publicity. This is something she certainly deserves. However, publicity is a treacherous device. After a concert the star joins the public, chatting and handing out posters and CDs, with stress erasing any distance between him/herself and the fans. Let us hope Umka will keep in this vein.
Let us also hope that she will visit Ukraine more frequently. It would be the very pleasant exception from the rule established by God knows whom, whereby Kyiv is mostly visited by the cheapest pop “stars,” products of makeshift promotional campaigns, lacking any vocal talent, intellect, or stage presence whatsoever. Is it not simply great to taste a real good dish among all that smelly stuff meant to look like molasses?
