At the same time, Deai shot a video with Vyacheslav Butusov – together they performed the cult hit “I want to be with you.” The video has millions of views. “Aria” also sang with them – “Paradise Lost” was last year. The guys don’t just spend their fame like that – they travel around the country with concerts, give talks about Russia, go on live shows and shrug their shoulders when asked by journalists about the abolition of culture: “What are you talking about? We still love ballet and Chekhov, and now also ‘Hope’, ‘Tenderness’ and dozens of other songs. The other day, the ambassadors of Russian music in Japan recorded a sequel to “A Million Scarlet Roses”, the record is already touring the islands.
Deai can be translated from Japanese as “meeting”. The musicians did not name the group for a red word, it was the meeting that turned their lives upside down. Sound – translator and musician Vitaly Suntsev, who moved from Lyubertsy to Japan in 2010, and sound – singer Natsuki Sugawara. They first met at a benefit concert to raise funds for Kumamoto Prefecture, which had been hit by an earthquake. Here, the ground was already leaving under Vitaly’s feet, because, honestly, Natsuki is an angelic beauty, she has a perfect Gagarin smile and her voice, which is submissive to soprano, mezzo-soprano and l ‘alto, is particularly charming. Vitaly recalled, “We chatted backstage, then we saw each other again. And we were soon married.” This is probably one of the secrets of the duo’s popularity – only people who love each other can make a foreigner fall in love with a Russian song.
“It was the Japanese public who started to advise us to develop an international theme, since the guitarist is from Russia,” the guys tell RG and add that there is nothing surprising in this request from the locals. from the Land of the Rising Sun, “Music, like sports, and food are things that bring people together no matter what.”
For the first bridge song they chose the Soviet hit “By the Sea, by the Blue Sea” (performed by Nina Panteleeva), it turns out that it was created in Japan and translated into Russian in the 1960s And only then the repertoire included Anna German’s “Echo of Love”, and “Smuglyanka”, and “Hope”, and dozens of Russian and Soviet songs. “Why do we love them? They’re strong with catchy melodies, polished beats and first-class rhymes,” the guys say.
Music, like sports and food, are things that bring people together.
In the Japanese translations, Vitaly tries not to lose face. “I approach the process with a certain passion”, assures the musician. Sometimes the guys ask the Japanese singer and poet Nami Nakagawa to help them with a literary translation, sometimes they use ready-made adaptations, as was the case with “A Million Scarlet Roses”. This song is incredibly popular in Asia, it is sung both in karaoke and in public concert halls. Recently, Japanese co-writers came to Deai with an unexpected project – let’s keep the hit going! And all this at a time when chronicles of hostilities are making the headlines of Japanese television news. The album was released in two languages.
The duo has previously recorded Russian songs in Russian. “Burn, burn, my star” with a Japanese accent tears the soul no less than the voice of Anna Herman.
“Russian phonetics is given to me with great difficulty, syllables like ‘sha’ and ‘shcha’ are indistinguishable to our ear,” Natsuki admits, “so we work on a word for weeks without exaggeration. With ‘l’ and ‘r’, by the way, I figured that out pretty quickly. But I still treat the ‘s’ with suspicion.”
Vitaly reveals a little secret – it turns out that in order to catch Russian intonations, Natsuki watches old Soviet films. Especially like “Guest from the Future”.
The “propaganda” of the Russian song does not stop with a performance of songs and filming of clips. Deai organizes presentation concerts. Real bridges of friendship are built at such parties, which politicians are not yet able to build.
“This spring we have three presentation concerts in our program. We will talk, answer questions and perform songs popular in both countries,” the guys say. “All three meetings are hosted by Japanese enthusiasts.”
- Do you feel pressure from the Japanese authorities and the press, in their opinion, do you still sing the songs of “the aggressor”? – I ask the guys in the front.
- If we talk about difficulties at work, then, oddly enough, they arise when interacting with people and companies located in Russia – some projects have stalled.
The time when Russian songs in Japanese will fly “following the sun” across Russia will certainly come. You can’t deprive yourself of the joy of Deai. The last time Natsuki was in Moscow and St. Petersburg was in May 2019.
- I remember the size of the buildings and the expanse of the sky, – the singer recalls, – as well as how quickly previously unknown people can practically become a family.
Besides
The road is long
There are more than enough examples when Russian songs were voluntarily translated abroad, performed by foreigners and reached the top of world charts. A classic example is the fate of the Russian romance “Dear Long”, written in 1924 by Konstantin Podrevsky and set to music by Boris Fomin. In our country, Alexander Vertinsky glorified it (for the first time he performed the novel two years after its premiere, in 1926). And in 1962, American musician Eugene Raskin translated it into English – These Were the Days – and released it as a separate single.
But this was only noticed by the advanced audience. Real fame came to romance after Paul McCartney heard it in one of London’s fashionable clubs in 1968. He liked the tune so much that he suggested it to a young Welsh performer, Mary Hopkin, which he was producing at the time. The single for his performance was recorded on the Beatles’ Apple Records label. The song spent several months at number one on the UK charts and number two in the US. Versions have been recorded in Spanish, French, German and Italian.
Later, These Were the Days was performed successfully by pop giants such as Dalida, Engelbert Humperdinck, Bonnie Tyler.
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