E-mail: sergey.nekludov@gmail.com Tel.: +7 (499) 973-43-54
15–7, Chayanova str., Moscow, 125047, Russian Federation
DSc in Philology, Full Professor, scientific curator, Center for Typological and Semiotic Folklore Studies, Russian State University for Humanities
Tel.: +7 (499) 956-96-47
84, Vernadskogo av., Moscow, 119571, Russian Federation
DSc in Philology, Full Professor, Chief Researcher, Laboratory of Theoretical Folkloristics, Presidential Academy of National Economy
This article was written as part of the Russian State University for Humanities Project “Song in Russian Culture: Poetics, Historical Dynamics, Social Context” (“RSUH Student Project Research Teams” competition).
The author thanks G. G. Superfin (Bremen), B. A. Ravdin (Riga), M. A. Melnichenko (St. Petersburg), A. V. Yudin (Gent), I. Rzepnikowska (Toruń), A. V. Skobelev (Voronezh), T. V. Shchurova (Odessa), L. N. Kiseleva (Tartu), and M. Lukin (Jerusalem) for their assistance.
Among the musical texts of the New Economic Policy (NEP) era, the song “Bublichki” (“Kupite bublichki ...”) [Little Hot Buns or Bagels (Buy Little Hot Buns)], most likely authored by the Odessa poet Yakov Yadov (1926), was especially widely known. Its melody, apparently, goes back to the Jewish folk song “Coal.” The song quickly spread and became part of urban folklore. It was also performed on the pop stage, both in Russia and in the Russian diaspora. From 1927 to 1945, more than fifty recordings appeared in Europe and America, most of them instrumental, and some both vocal and instrumental (and it was not only sung in Russian); in the USSR there was only one “test” recording by Leonid Utesov. The largest number of records dates from the period 1927–1930; in 1929 there was a rapid jump of this indicator, which then sharply declined to one record per year. Interest in the song revived after the Berry Sisters performed a Yiddish version of “Bublichki” in the USSR in 1959, and grew from the 1960s onwards in the wake of the retro fascination with Russian romance and urban folk songs. The author has traced thirteen complete gramophone recordings of “Bublichki,” including versions in Polish, French, and Yiddish. In addition, the text of the song was quoted by contemporaries and memoirists, and also made its way into sheet music and into songbooks, both printed (in 1929–1930) and manuscript (in the 1940s). In total, the author counts at least two dozen records which were recorded soon after the appearance of the first, presupposed “primary” text, and that can be regarded as representative of the initial phase of the development of this song tradition. Their comparative analysis allows us to reconstruct the probable content of this primary text and the subsequent formation of two main versions of the song and their various modifications
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