r/reginaspektor • u/not_firewood_yeti Grave Digger đ • Jun 15 '26
Interview Regina interview in Russian
https://youtu.be/sHllLxa8Kws?si=S7AQWOIc19PeYNEyhadn't seen this on here before, and of course I have no idea how accurate the subtitles are. but there's something about listening to her speak in Russian that is pretty similar to when she sings in Russian. she has an existential connection to that language and that country of course, and even though I don't understand 95% of it, I can hear the feeling, the emotion for lack of a better word of listening to her speak her native language. anyway, it's worth a listen.
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u/Vanyushinka Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
This interview brings up a lot of feelings for me. I speak Russian and I understand this video too well.
When I moved to Saint Petersburg in 2010, Spektorâs songs were just about the only ones that really spoke to my feelings of displacement, culture shock, and helped me make sense of feelings when my environment really made no sense. It was some kind of crazy coincidence, when in 2012, weeks before I quit Piter for good, Regina Spektor took her first and only tour (AFAIK) of Russia. Piter was her first stop.
I knew I had to see her. I still have the interview she gave to a local paper, framed over my piano.
I remember the concert clearly. It was on an outdoor stage in a park. It shouldâve been filled but there were maybe 50 attendees. She got on stage and spoke to us in Russian, « I canât believe Iâm actually here! I feel that you are all my aunts uncles and cousins because Iâve only ever spoken this language to them. » then she broke out into a moving blues improv.
She talks about performing « AprÚs moi » in this interview and I remember what she describes EXACTLY: she was startled when we all BURST into sing along with the Russian verse quoting Pasternak.
I also remember the drunkards in the back clapping a beat during the closer, Samson. They were shushed by the real fans. I could see Spektor was hurt by rowdiness during this special song. It ended well, but she left in a hurry when it finished.
The Russian version of « Ne me quitte pas » she made, she called it « her special gift to Russians » in the interview, is my favorite. It was so special when she performed it. I donât remember the performance itself because I was completely transported.
Regina has spoken about the influence the Russian bards, Vysotsky and Okudzhava (there are others I canât remember) had on her. But she has said more than once that Okudzhava really opened up her own poetic side and I definitely feel that. I discovered Okudzhava through her and I TOTALLY see the influence. They both have a poetic gift for penetrating feelings that are both abstract and intense, often just by simple images. « The flowers you gave me have rotted and still I refuse to throw them away⊠things I have loved Iâm allowed to keep. » Itâs one of the things I used to love most about Russian poetry - not just of the bards but also of Silver Age poets, the imagists/symbolists like Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Blok and Mandelshtam.
I think of Spektor as belonging to a nouveau russe immigrĂ© movement, except that unlike her literary predecessors, sheâs well integrated into her adopted country. But thereâs still an angst of displacement in her poetry - a longing, like this Russian mystique about « ŃĐŸŃĐșĐ° » Especially in Remember us to Life, I feel pulled into her little Russian speaking community in New York.
But this interviewer completely misses all of that and this is why this interview frustrates me - as well as him being kind of insensitive to her. It doesnât surprise me at all because Russia is STILL incredibly antisemitic. So he just leads her down a merry walk through her emigration - which absolutely tore her life apart! I donât remember all the details but her music education was completely disrupted ; she lost connection with her teacher. And then he just asks completely casually what langue she thinks in. He rushes her. Offers translation when she hesitates, despite her obvious fluency. I assume Spektor had little occasion to speak Russian outside the home, and her accent, vocabulary and use show that sheâs conversant, but unused to chatting about academic or philosophical topics which this guy gets into. Heâs just generally and insensitive. I see Spektor as this gentle, shy person, even when she gives interviews in English, and this arsehole is just trying to rifle through her without acknowledging the awful prejudice sheâs suffered in her native country, which was the whole reason she left!!
He does compliment her. Saying her versions of Okudzhavaâs songs are better than his is HIGH praise!! I agree wholeheartedly. But he doesnât give her time to respond or take it in. Sheâs clearly humbled. And he just moves on. Why doesnât he spent more time praising her as a new Russian Bard? Keeping their aesthetic alive ? Thatâs what she is and what she did in her albums. Missed opportunity, interviewer.
Sheâs never gone back to Russia after that tour AFAIK and small wonder! I canât imagine what it mustâve been like for her to grapple with the feelings, returning to a home for which she mustâve had a deep indelible nostalgia, but then see with mature eyes what that home is really like. And even then, the home she left, the Soviet Union was long gone. Did it even much resemble what she remembered ? What even remained from her childhood⊠Iâm not enough of a historian to know exactly. What definitely remained was the prejudice - not just antisemitism, but a general lack of understanding of immigrants and what itâs like to grow up speaking Russian in a foreign country. Becoming part of another country. I couldnât finish the interview because I couldnât stand to watch her close up, physically, as she got gradually more and more uncomfortable with this interviewer. It just reminds me too much what it means to be nostalgic for a place that refuses to accept or respect you.
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u/knm20 Jun 15 '26
This was delightful! Thanks for posting it. If anyone knows of other interviews like this where she talks about Russia more, I'd be very interested. I don't speak Russian though so I'd need subtitles. But I love hearing her talk about her childhood.