Zemfira
Prosti Menya Moya Lyubov'

The first time I happened to hear a song by Zemfira was from the car radio of the taxi moving at a snail's pace through the colossal traffic jams in the center of Moscow. It was the year 1999. At first, I didn't pay much attention. A pleasant piece, okay, but nothing more. Nevertheless, I realized that for some reason, that song had stuck with me. Who was that Russian group singing that track with such a "Western," melodic and tense sound at the same time, with a female vocalist capable of giving her voice both velvety and decisive, powerful and delicate tones, and with that lyric that dealt with the mundane facts of life and dreams of an ordinary Russian girl, lost in a damp and unwelcoming Moscow, with disenchanted lyricism? And then I remember being struck by the pause before the finale, where, on the only remaining sound of the keyboards, the chorus fading out was introduced by a drum roll so hauntingly similar to that in "Pride (In The Name Of Love)", in the original version of "The Unforgettable Fire". As is my habit when I hear music that catches my attention, I started gathering clues.

It didn't take me long to find out. The piece was called "Arivederci", in Russian transliteration spelled just like that, missing an 'r'. And it wasn't a group, but rather a singer, Zemfira Ramazanova, born in Ufa, a Russian industrial-oil city at the gates of the Urals, on August 26, 1976. In reality, as I realized shortly after, the frequency with which that track, along with two or three others from the same debut and self-titled album by the artist, could be heard everywhere in Russia during those months, was tangible evidence of an emerging phenomenon in Russia: zemfiromania was spreading more and more every day.

In Russia, ever since the emergence of the Zemfira phenomenon, rivers of words have flowed from music critics and sociologists trying to explain the reason for so much success. In the brief space of a review, one wouldn't manage to conduct an in-depth reflection on the topic, but it is certain that Zemfira comes to shake the foundations of a rather stale music scene in Russia, dominated, on the one hand, by the weary epigones of Vladimir Vysotsky and the French chansonniers who sing with voices afflicted by vodka and unfiltered cigarettes about the daily post-Soviet miseries, both material and, more often, spiritual. On the other hand, there are low-cost unlimited series productions of pop ditties all very similar to each other, devoid of any meaning and value, entrusted to the voice or even just the face of perfect strangers loudly acclaimed only to be quickly forgotten, or forgettable. And instead, Zemfira. She proposes and imposes a never-before-heard style. She dresses very personal reflections on the meaning of life in engaging, sometimes brilliant electropop, definitely rock, and sometimes in Latin American atmospheres and rhythms (her eclecticism in visiting the most disparate musical genres is one of her peculiarities), talking about herself and calling herself by name even in the song titles, honest in her lyrics sometimes to the point of naivety, yet always authentic, at times vulnerable and sweet, at times cheeky and a pain like a snotty kid from the many Bronxes of Russian suburbs. But it's precisely in this way that, with extreme naturalness, she manages to become the spokesperson for a large portion of Russian society, namely the girls and boys aged 15 to 25-30 years. And she does this by revolutionizing the language of the song form, introducing expressions from the slang of Moscow's suburbs and mixing it with splashes of single English words, paying very little heed to meter and rhyme, yet often managing to miraculously reconcile the intrinsic sound of the word, the melody it rests upon, and the emotions and vibrations that rise (respectively) to the heart and brain when you listen to her words within her music.

And so, Zemfira, from a child prodigy, sent at five years old by her parents, a history teacher father and a doctor mother, to piano school, to writing lyrics and music for her first song at seven, captain of the Russian national women's basketball team in the early '90s, in 2000, at 24 years, with only one long playing to her credit, finds herself as one of the most popular figures in Russia and rich enough to repay without too much distress the handsome sum of about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars that Leonid Burlakov, her first producer, had invested in the making of her debut album "Zemfira", to end the not-so-calm discussions that followed after Zemfira announced to Burlakov that she would produce the second album on her own, without him. Zemfira then moves to production, and records an album between Moscow and the Whitfield Street Studio in London, played with the musicians who had formed her original group.

"Prosti Menya Moya Liubov', which contains 12 tracks, opens in a rather uninspiring manner with "Shkalyat Datchiki", a rock-tinged piece that hints at the problem of drug addiction, predictable in composition and stylistic solutions, which may become tiresome after a few listens. Things significantly improve with the second track, "Zero", a pleasant musical promenade infused with reminiscences of The Doors' "Light My Fire" and "Riders On The Storm". The third track, Sozrela, is the first hit single from this album. It is a sort of musical nursery rhyme where Zemfira enjoys dismantling the cliché she herself built in "Romashki", from the previous album. In both songs, the author offers a portrait of herself, but while in the first track she is the devochka s pleerom, an irreverent and carefree girl spending her days with the walkman's music constantly blasting in her ears, in "Sozrela" she has grown and matured, is already a woman, reflecting on life's questions that require always having an answer ready, she realizes she lives not just for herself but also for the people surrounding her with not always declared and honest intentions, and as a response to this acquired awareness, she has no choice but to retreat into her desolate solitude. Musically, this track doesn't strike us as one of the album's most successful, often leaving one eager to know what comes next.

And what follows is indeed a classy song, "Khochesh'". Zemfira, in this refined ballad, featuring, among other moments, the excellent electric guitar solo, tackles the eternal theme of Eros and Thanatos. Love is what the author feels for the loved one; Death is what she tries to avoid for this person: Please, don't die / Otherwise, I'll have to do the same (Pozhaluysta ne umiraj / Ili mne pridetsja tozhe), and also what she promises to give to anyone who opposes their happiness (Do you want me to kill the neighbors / Who won't let you sleep? (Khochesh' ja ub'yu sosedej, / Chto meshaiut spat'?). Another pleasant track is "Rassvety", where the synthesized base and the slide guitar stand out on the melodic chorus. In "Nenavizhu", a track characterized by a pronounced rhythmic section, Zemfira indulges, even in the title (I hate you) in that complacent and destructive pessimism that will unfortunately often return in her more recent work (album "Vendetta", 2005). The next two tracks, "Sigarety" and "Dokazano", showcase this author's extraordinary ability to create pure melodies. In "Sigarety", she presents a very common theme in Russian rock production: the essential relationship between human beings and nicotine: If it were possible / To stick portraits deep in the heart / I'd also leave my cigarettes for memory (Esli by mozhno / V serdce, poglubzhe, vkleit' portrety / I ja na pamyat' ostavlyu svoi sigarety ). And thus it becomes almost automatic to connect with what is perhaps the most famous Russian pop song on this theme, "Pachka sigaret", by Viktor Tsoy and his Kino, the most famous Russian pop-rock group of the '80s. In "Dokazano", with a series of quick impressionistic vignettes, Zemfira presents the figure of her mother, reading a Nabokov novel while traveling on a subway wagon.

The splendid title track "Prosti Menya Moya Lyubov'" is sustained by a powerfully suggestive electric guitar lullaby. Notable in this track are the keyboards and the acoustic guitar played by Zemfira herself. The metaphor of the sea is used to talk about the memories linked to the loved one, now absent and far away. The memories, like the waves of the sea, come and go, seem real and present, so much so that one would want to hold onto them, and instead they immediately drift away, leaving a void in the soul and the need to ask forgiveness from the absent interlocutor: Forgive Me My Love (Prosti Menya Moya Lyubov'). The text is built on a few images and situations, enclosed by the chorus that coincides with the title. The author is on the seashore, watching the fishermen cast and pull to shore the nets in which the souls of the two lovers have been caught, then she feels the water-soaked jeans cling to her skin, giving her an unpleasant sensation, like a weight pulling her towards the bottom of a situation that is hard to escape. And in the boundless silence where neither the passing hours nor the screeching of seagulls are heard, the loved one is nothing more than a bronze-colored silhouette on the sand. Forgive Me My Love, Prosti Menya Moya Lyubov'. Listen to this song if you want to experience emotions through music, best if accompanied by the beautiful video where Zemfira, on the seashore, is as feminine as ever in a long black dress and finally free from the resistance to show her lively Tatar eyes, which she otherwise used to hide behind dark sunglasses and hair falling over her forehead. In the video, we initially see Zemfira attempting a hesitant approach to a humanoid materialized from the sea, she would like to extend her hand, but the being responds by recoiling suddenly, frightened. And Zemfira has a mirror reaction to that. Then we see her running along the seashore, collapsing exhausted onto the sand, and finally surrounded by multiple clones of herself. Touching song, splendid video. "Iskala" is another standout track from the album. Once again, Zemfira is dealing with a love theme; the text is conceived as a chronicle of the search the protagonist, in the guise, almost, of a private detective, conducts with absolute determination to find the lost lover. The track is very strong musically. On a syncopated rhythm, a string pizzicato inserts that, like other tracks by the artist, may betray more or less obvious sources of inspiration. Here, for example, I sensed a nod to Sting's "Englishman In New York". Nonetheless, Zemfira's song possesses its own intrinsic beauty, able to forgive any echoes of already-known tracks. Also noteworthy, the drums crash like an avalanche on the chorus guitar riff. The pleasant ballad "Ne Otpuskaj" closes the album much better than it started.

Although this is not Zemfira's best work, which until now remains her debut album, "Prosti Menya Moya Lyubov' is certainly a successful work. Still not entirely consumed by problems due to the difficult management of her public persona, not pressured by the relentless laws of show business, to which she seems to progressively succumb in later works, in this LP, Zemfira still manages to achieve a happy balance between original inspiration and final artistic result. For this reason, the album is very enjoyable, with peaks of excellence, with the title track standing out above all.