Palomar Mountain News

From: David Ross [mailto:editor@valleycenter.com] 
Subject: RUSSIAN WOODSTOCK

Bonnie, here’s a front page article from this week’s Roadrunner about a “Russian Woodstock” on Palomar Mountain.  Get your copy of this week’s paper from in front of the post office.

Russian Woodstock on the Mountain

What is being described as a Russian version of “Woodstock” 

(although not with the noisy rock music!) will happen this weekend on Palomar Mountain at the small stage and campground adjacent to the fire station on Crestline Road.

The Roadrunner talked to Boris  Goldshteyn, a transplanted Russian from Moscow who now lives in San Diego, who has put together this multicultural event and is inviting local residents (and especially Jazz musicians!) to attend.

The folk music and poetry festival, to which about 500 people, including 300 Russians as well as visitors from the Czech Republic, Israel and Canada are expected to attend is called “Remembrance of the Future,” in reference to the first such festival Goldshteyn put on in America about 15 years ago. That first gathering was only in Russian, this one will be multicultural, he says.

The group is renting the Forest Service Group Campground and the Palomar Mountain Com-munity Center’s small stage.

The event is free for locals who are interested in seeing what it’s all about.

“Everyone sings their own songs or reads their own poems It’s a Russian tradition to sit around fire and sing songs to each other or sing them together. Especially song writer to song writer or singers to listeners. We called this style like a bard’s songs,” he says.

This style of festival was made popular in Russia by the artist, poet and musician Michael (Mikhail) Ancharov (1923-1990).

Goldshteyn described Ancharov as “a bard, a great artist who drew pictures and was a very famous book writer in Russia. In his books he didn’t just write words but lyrics. These he performed on the stage like a song.”

Ancharov developed this style from 1937 when he was 14. He served in the Soviet army in World War II. “All during World War II he wrote about love and about life after the war. When the war was finished he started to write songs about the war.”

Goldshteyn says that writers and performers of such songs were inspired by American singers like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, performers who loved their country but not necessarily their government.

“When we were young we learned how to write lyrics and sing songs from those artists,” says Goldshteyn.

“Even though Stalin [the Russian dictator] wasn’t good for us, Ancharov loved his country. All his life he wrote about the guys who worked,” he says. “We learn from these songs how to live.”

Goldshteyn kind of likes having his festival compared to a Russian “Woodstock,” but he hastens to out that “Our bards don’t make loud performance. We don’t do electrical sounds.”

Although in Russia such festivals have been known to attract several hundred thousand fans to the banks of the Volga River, there probably won’t be more than about 550 (plus whatever local people attend) at this event.

The festival will be held on Friday and Saturday, concentrating on 30 artists and maybe more who will appear on Saturday from 3:30-10 p.m.

The schedule is as follows:

3:30-4 p.m. Local talents (to be announced)

4-5 p.m. Russian kids’ concert

5-6 p.m. Songs from the favorite memories of the performers past

6-7 p.m.  Jam session from the local talents and Russian musicians with poets performing their lyrics in English

7-10 p.m. Main concert on the stage: “Five dozen years on the earth plus.”

There will also be a lot of sitting around the campfire and singing and talking all night, says Goldshteyn.

“We will sing songs all that time non-stop. Some of us will sleep for maybe two hours,” he says.

He says he would love for local jazz bands to visit and play American songs with them.

Goldshteyn, who both sings and does poetry, will hand out copies of his double CD to select friends.

The group also plans to tour Palomar Observatory Saturday morning and early afternoon.

The Community Center is located at 21610 Crestline Rd., Palomar Mountain. 

 Regards,

David Ross

Editor

Valley Roadrunner

760-749-1112

 “I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.”