Elena Kamburova is a famous Soviet and later Russian singer. The performer gained wide popularity in the 1970s of the XX century. In 1995, she was awarded the title of People's Artist of the Russian Federation.
Elena Kamburova: Childhood and youth
The artist was born on July 11, 1940 in the city of Stalinsk (today Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo Region) in the family of an engineer and a pediatrician. After some time, her family moved to Khmelnitsky (then - Proskurov) in the Ukrainian SSR, where she lived for a long time.
It cannot be said that the girl dreamed of a big stage since childhood. Being small, she did not try herself on stage and only in the 9th grade she first performed at a school evening. As the singer admitted, it was a real "failure".
The girl decided to go on stage directly from the audience, dancing, passed through the audience and went on stage to sing. However, everything did not go according to plan. Even in the hall, during the dance, little Lena stumbled and fell, barely breaking through to the stage, unable to sing. In tears, the girl ran away from school without even taking her outerwear from the wardrobe.
However, by the end of the school program, she wanted to connect her life with creativity. But she was interested not so much in music as in acting. There was a desire to enter the theater institute, but Lena was not confident in her abilities. As a result, I decided to enter an industrial institute in Kyiv. Two years later, the girl realized that this was not her calling. She moved to Moscow to enter the famous theater school. Schukin.
Kamburova did not enter the theater school. The reason was a very bright expressive appearance, which did not fit the requirements of dramaturgy. There were only two ways out - either to return home, or to stay in Moscow and look for new ways out. The girl chose the second and got a job at a construction site. A year later, she entered the circus school, and then - at GITIS Lunacharsky, in the direction of "Variety Directing".
Musical formation
Even at the school, the teacher showed the girl the compositions of Novella Matveeva and said that, in her opinion, this style of vocals would be very suitable for the girl. This determined the further fate of Elena. It was with the song Matveeva that Kamburova first appeared on stage as a performer. The song "What a big wind" became a real "wind of change" in the life of a young girl.
In the 1960s, there was a significant increase in interest in poetry in the USSR. Kamburova was very fond of poetry. Therefore, being in search of a repertoire for a subsequent performance on stage, she paid considerable attention to the verses of the composition. Matveeva, Okudzhava - the serious themes inherent in their poems were atypical for pop songs of that time.
However, Kamburova decided to talk about the innermost thanks to music. Most of all in music, the girl was attracted by the combination of poems and melody into a single very emotional whole.
Soon the girl met Larisa Kritskaya. She was an excellent composer and, like Elena, was passionate about poetry. Together they leafed through numerous books in search of new poems.
The result of this search was a collection of Cretan songs. It uses vocal parts with poems by many poets. It was thanks to Kritskaya Kamburova that the first record was released in 1970. It contained a significant number of poems from many authors - Levitansky and others.
Songs based on poems by famous poets
In the new decade, Elena Kamburova began working with Mikael Tariverdiev, who wrote new music for the artist. Among the songs appeared "I'm such a tree ...", which became a real hallmark of the singer. The performer's work was influenced by such writers as Tvardovsky, even Hemingway.
Here the topics of war and humanity were touched upon. But one distinctive feature of Kamburova's work was the theme of human rights. The right to life, the right to peace, the right to love. The civil war for her is not heroism or patriotism, but tragedy. A real human tragedy. With her characteristic melancholy, Elena touched on this topic extensively.
Simultaneously with the release of the first disc, the film "Monologue" was released, which was a recording of the singer's concert performance. After that, her popularity among the people increased significantly. In 1975, Kamburova began collaborating with composer Vladimir Dashkevich, who created magnificent dramatic arrangements.
As a poetic basis, there were poems by Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Blok. The songs were striking in their melancholy and penetration. Covering the themes of a person's fate - tragic, but extraordinary, they conveyed the mood to the listener through a unique symbiosis of music, poetry and vocal performance.
The popularity of the singer Elena Kamburova
In the 1970s, some poets were on the so-called "black list". Public performance of their work could be punishable by law. Many performers abandoned this and began to replace the poems of famous authors with other works. Kamburova acted differently. When speaking, she called the real authors by fictitious names. So, Gumilyov, according to her version, became Grant.
It is not surprising that the singer gained incredible popularity among the creative intelligentsia. She did what many did not dare. Therefore, her work was literally filled with the spirit of freedom and human rights. Together with her music, poetry received a new right to life, despite existing prohibitions.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the singer continued to release new collections in collaboration with famous composers. As a basis, as before, the singer took the poems of famous poets - Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva, Tyutchev and others.
A very interesting release came out in 1986. "Let Silence Fall" is a series of songs that were arranged in chronological order and revealed the stages of the country's historical development. There were also folk songs, and hits, and compositions on the theme of history.
And today the singer gives concerts in different cities of Russia and abroad with songs of past years. Her talent is also especially appreciated in Germany, the USA, Great Britain and a number of other countries. Her work is also characterized by the use of poetry and various foreign authors. But one thing unites the poems - love for a person and reasoning about his fate under different circumstances.
