Songs by Bulat Okudzhava

About Okudzhava

First songs of Bulat Okudzhava were not published in the homeland of the poet, but in Krakow, Poland, in 1970, the collection of 'Bulat Okudzawa, 20 piosenek na glos i gitare' or 'Bulat Okudzhava, 20 Songs for Voice and Guitar' came out. However, the collection compilers, Dabrowsky, Woroszylski et al., apparently wished to create a "stage" version of Okudzhava's songs, and the author's melodies and accompaniments were substantially rearranged, straying rather far from the original. So, the first musical edition of original Bulat Okudzhava's songs appeared in America.

In fact, as Okudzhava describes his first large public appearance in Moscow, difficulties chased him in steping on to the stage as a singer.

... In 1960, I suddenly had my first public appearance. It was in Leningrad, at a House of Workers in the Arts, in a little hall. Everything went very well there. People heard about this in a Moscow union of movie makers, and I was invited. It was a Saturday entertainment... Appearing before me was the film "Watch Out - Banality!" Then I was announced... No one then knew me or was especially interested in me. So I went out on the huge stage terribly timid; I stood before a damaged microphone and began to sing one of my songs. And because I was so nervous, apparently half of the words were lost - it seems to me...

Suddenly someone in the hall yelled, "Banality!" and a group of people sitting near this person began to applaud. I took my guitar and left the stage... Such was my first large public appearance. -- B. S. Okudzhava