Today in our report in the radio-blog I will stay in the Czech Republic. It is some time, that two sahaja yogis from the East perform here – Oleksiy Shevchenko from Ukraine and Vladimir Ugodin from Russia. We know both of them from CDs played on our radio. Oleksiy contributed to Ekaterina Lavrentyeva´s soft album „When I am In Heaven“ and Vladimir has here his rock album „The Great Illusion“. Let´s have a look together at both CDs. The first interview belongs to Oleksiy Shevchenko:Oleksiy, what were your musical beginnings like? Is the guitar the only instrument you can play?
My parents have bought a very simple gitar for my younger brother to learn to play, then I was in the 5th grade of the basic school. But very soon I was also very interested in guitar and joined a local music school in my hometown Zaporizhzhja. Since then I played in the school band and we liked to seat at the starecase of my friend’s block of flats with good echo and play how and what we can. In 1999 with actively joining Sahaja Yoga, I have understood why Shri Mataji has given me this instrument into hands and a couple years later, I may say She opened a new instument that was hidden within me and I could not really use it before – my voice. I also can play percussion.
Together with Ekaterina Lavrentyeva you have some time ago released a very soft album of songs. How did such cooperation come into your minds?Well, at that time we have already been actively playing with Ekaterina at different Sahaj events and programs. Our modest duet without a name did even small tours, like I’ve already sent you about one of them earlier and at some point it came to our mind that we could create a „song-demo“ album without much of arrangement in music, so the Ukrainian collective could simply learn some songs like that. Basically that is it. Later on we were surprised that this insophisticated album had a success, for example with Czech collectivity.
Who are the authors of the album songs, where are they from?
The authors of the songs are mostly Ukrainian yogis, several of them are Katja’s, some Russian yogis and some english-speaking ones, whome, unfortunately I do not know (nevertheless thanks for them for these nice songs!).
How and where did your CD was born? Did you use any home studio or did you record professionally? The album has a very good sound and the musical background is made only by your guitar and your voices …
The recording was done in a home studio of a Kyiv yogi, Alexej Kabanov, who is himself an ethno-folk musician, playing increadible multitude of instruments, you can hear his sitar and santur playing in the Heavenly River album.
On this album I was taken aback among others by two songs which have different character. On is blues Cool Breeze and the second is a special and coloured by synthetizer Durga, Durga. How did they come into existence?
The „Cool Breeze“ song is the one, whose, author, unfortunately, we do not know, but it came to us from Italy, Rome ashram, I did some improvising of my own and it came out like this. And Durga-Durga was composed by a Russian yogini – probably the best vocalist ever in Russian collectivity, she is a professional opera singer, now after marriage with German, went to live in Austria – Tatiana Samojlova. I believe, you can find some videos with her performing on YouTube. Primarily we also recorded it only with guitar and two voices but then Alexej decided to put this synthezator arrangement on the top. We ourselves could not imagine that this song has such potential to sonund in „orchestra“ way :)
The recording was done in a home studio of a Kyiv yogi, Alexej Kabanov, who is himself an ethno-folk musician, playing increadible multitude of instruments, you can hear his sitar and santur playing in the Heavenly River album.
On this album I was taken aback among others by two songs which have different character. On is blues Cool Breeze and the second is a special and coloured by synthetizer Durga, Durga. How did they come into existence?
The „Cool Breeze“ song is the one, whose, author, unfortunately, we do not know, but it came to us from Italy, Rome ashram, I did some improvising of my own and it came out like this. And Durga-Durga was composed by a Russian yogini – probably the best vocalist ever in Russian collectivity, she is a professional opera singer, now after marriage with German, went to live in Austria – Tatiana Samojlova. I believe, you can find some videos with her performing on YouTube. Primarily we also recorded it only with guitar and two voices but then Alexej decided to put this synthezator arrangement on the top. We ourselves could not imagine that this song has such potential to sonund in „orchestra“ way :)
