Review: Kielletyt laulut

Strong from power… and violence

The Helsinki City Theatre’s Studio Elsa is currently performing a production of Forbidden Songs , dramatised and directed by Pirkko Saisio. In addition to Saisio, Jonna Järnefelt, Janne Marja-aho and a trio led by Jussi Tuurna will take the stage.

The performance is an intense nearly one-and-a-half-hour ensemble, with songs that shed light on Russia’s reality, past and present from different angles. Open violence, murders of journalists open and close 20 songs, which provide material for reflection on the essence and roots of power – and violence – their relationship and relativity.

The songs are about marginalized, helpless and powerless people who long for their friends, love and freedom. They also tell about their authors, often anonymous, who nevertheless have such partners as Vladimir Vysotsky, Bulat Okudzhava and Osip Mandelstam.
The songs form a polyphonic, internationalist whole, which helps to understand how in conditions of blind arbitrariness and subservience, people’s suffering was allowed and succeeded in preserving a literary form so that everything is clear even decades later.

In Russia, poetry, even the unnamed, has shown astonishing vitality, starting with Alexander Pushkin, who wrote a moving poem in December 1825 for his friends who participated in the rebellion and were exiled to Siberia. At the climax of the forbidden songs, this tradition is represented by Osip Mandelstam’s St. Petersburg, Vladimir Vysotsky’s Lukewarm Horses , and Bulat Okudzhava’s Francois Villon’s Prayer.

The highlights of the forbidden songs are Pirkko Saisio’s interpretations of the songs of Vysotsky and Okudzhava, especially Francois Villon’s prayer, which concludes the performance. Speed and optimism pulsate with the song Anna palaa, in which the musicians also get to show their skills. No wonder it had to be presented as an extra. One of the highlights of the forbidden songs was Sara Puljula’s bass solo in the song Ja sä vaan naurat.