E-mail: sergey.nekludov@gmail.com, Tel.: +7 (499) 973-43-54
15–7, Chayanov str., Moscow, 125047, Russian Federation
PhD, Full Professor (Philology), Scientific Curator, Center for Typological and Semiotic Folklore Studies, Russian State University for Humanities;
+7 (499) 956-96-47
84, Vernadskу av., Moscow, 119571, Russian Federation
Chief Researcher, Laboratory of Theoretical Folkloristics, Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration
This article was written as part of the Russian State University for Humanities project, “Song Traditions of the 20th — 21st Centuries: Poetic Structures, Biographical Discourse and Historical Narrative” (the contest “Student project scientific collectives RSUH”).
The author thanks M. L. Lurie for critical discussion of this topic.
Among the urban songs of the twentieth century, there are several that can be labeled ‘beggar songs’ based on their content and communicative stance. They are usually monologues about the sad fate of the hero/heroine, who is forced to sell small goods (bagels, cigarettes) or beg for alms on a cold night. An expressive example is the well-known song “Papirosy” (“Friends, buy papirosy”), written by the well-known musician, actor and director of Jewish Theater in New York, Herman Yablokov (1922/1932). It was composed in Yiddish, but with the story placed in a prerevolutionary Russian context and with the possible use of some Russian song motifs. Questions about the origin of the melody require separate consideration; the song clearly had a musical predecessor — a Jewish folk melody, probably dating from the nineteenth century. The Russian version of “Papirosy” is a free translation from the Yiddish, with some omissions and additions. Its text is very stable; the variants differ only in their completeness and in the stylistic and linguistic development of some narrative details. It seems to have appeared in the late 1950s or early 1960s after a Moscow concert by the Barry Sisters, who had performed the song in its original version with great success. The author of the translation may have been a restaurant performer belonging to the bilingual Russian-Jewish tradition. It can be assumed that the Russian adaptation was originally made for a specific performer (and even a specific performance) but was so well received by the audience that it began to be repeated and then passed into folklore.
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