Natasha Khomyakova He is like a father to us: how “Lesopoval” raised more than one generation of Russians 09/15/2024, 08:33

Forest Workers’ Day in 2024 coincides with the birthday of the father of the Lesopoval group. September 15 marks the 101st anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Tanich. Most likely, only those who work in this industry know about the professional holiday. And about the Lesopoval group, perhaps, all Russian-speaking people. Entrepreneurs and housewives, taxi drivers and teachers, accountants and doctors, engineers and forest industry workers listen to it. Over the 34 years of its existence, the group has changed soloists, Tanich passed away, the country has changed, but old songs live on and new ones appear. Because we all came from Lesopoval.

The current permanent composition of the group consists of three soloists: Ilya Efimov, Alexander Sokolov, Maxim Porshin. In large and solo concerts, they are accompanied by a percussionist, a saxophonist, and sometimes even backup dancers. The team is led by the poetess Lydia Tanich-Kozlova, the widow of Mikhail Tanich, who wrote many beautiful songs for other artists, for example, “Iceberg” by Alla Pugacheva and “Snow is Spinning” performed by the famous Yuri Peterson and VIA “Flame. ”

It would seem that what is in Tanich’s current “Lesopoval” besides the songs and the name? He himself remained in it. Hundreds of texts written for other singers did not fully reflect him: neither “Black Cat” by Tamara Miansarova or Edita Piekha (whoever likes more, even the group “Bravo”), nor “Mirror” by Yuri Antonov, nor “Komarovo” by Igor Sklyar or “The Knot” by Alena Apina. You can continue for a very long time. In “Lesopoval” there is the soul of a poet.

This is not a caper romanticizing crime and hooliganism. These are poems about life, set to good music.

The Lesopoval group sings not about the camp, but about people on both sides of the barbed wire. After all, those who find themselves on the “wrong side” also have souls and feelings. Mikhail Tanich knew this firsthand: he spent six years in the Solikamsk camps because in a friendly company he praised the quality of German radios and highways. And this was after Mikhail Isaevich went through the front and received the Order of the Red Star and the Order of Victory. He came to the logging site for pure nonsense, for a joke. He contracted tuberculosis and therefore could never return home, but the exiled artist Konstantin Rotov took Tanich (at that time he was still a prisoner of Mikhail Tankhilevich) to his design team.

After liberation, the future poet was forbidden to live in big cities, and he settled on Sakhalin. Newspapers began to publish his poems under the pseudonym Mikhail Tanich. And so he stuck. For centuries.

The poet continued to write until his departure in 2008. He left behind seemingly inexhaustible archives. The widow now works with them, sometimes choosing a text set to music by friendly composers, most often Alexander Dobronravov and Konstantin Minin. And fans get a new product from Tanich and Lesopoval.

Unlike other directors, producers and authors, neither Mikhail Isaevich nor Lidiya Nikolaevna forbids former soloists of the group to include the group’s songs in their repertoire. For example, Sergei Kuprik, who came to Lesopoval after the tragic death of the first artist Sergei Korzhukov, sings “I’ll buy you a house” and other hits of the group at his concerts.

Speaking of them, performances. There are a lot of them. The team actively tours, sings at corporate events and participates in national concerts of Radio Chanson and Chanson TV. There are not many listeners under 30 in the halls, after all, “Lesopoval” is a song of “those who know, who lived, who put poetry to music”. The younger part of the audience comes with their parents, those who are 30-40 years old come because they grew up with this group, finally understand, and now the lines “live now, not later, then there will be no time to live” already sound about them. For older listeners, not only the texts, but also the rhythm of Lesopoval are close: measured, melodic, calm. Although it is a danceable and fun song, it is slow compared to modern hits of pop artists. You won’t be able to dance until you run out of breath. And don’t rush to switch from foot to foot – quite.

Group members say that people are also getting younger thanks to the internet. Young soloists came who are active on social networks, who break the stereotype that “chanson is for sedentary people”, who show the life of ordinary guys. And young people come to them.

I also think about the “Lesopoval” phenomenon: everything outside is changing. New supermarkets are being built, new computers, cars, some new technologies are appearing. But the essence of man, his essence, remains the same. The same vices, the same passions, the same mistakes. The basis does not change. Mikhail Isaevich wrote about this: the heroes of the songs “Lesopoval” can find themselves in different circumstances and cope with them in their own way. In many songs of the group, each person, when listening and thinking, can find a story about himself: “This happened to me, this is how I felt,” says the vocalist of the group Maxim Porshin.

It is impossible to predict what will be the most popular tomorrow in Russian music, whose songs will be heard from every iron for at least a week, and then everyone will get tired again. No one will ever get tired of “Downloading” because Tanich has created history that is a classic. We will always want a house by the pond in the Moscow region. And always cry, “There was a boy, there is no boy.” And it doesn’t matter where we work: in the State Duma or at the forestry enterprise. “Lesopoval” raised us like a father: with jokes, stories, and sometimes slaps on the head.

As long as the white swan waves the shooting star across the lake, everything will be fine with us. And if something goes wrong, we will say: “That’s where I messed up!” And you will immediately feel better.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.