Antonovka Records, once based in Russia but now ensconced in Moldova, continues to release some of the most seminal music to ever come out of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and their reach seems to keep expanding. This album covers the work of traditional singer Cristina Godoroja, an ethnomusicologist and singer based in Moldova’s capital, Chișinău. The works hail from Bessarabia and also feature Romanian-language songs. A worthy addition to any world music collection.
Yet another amazing collection has been released by Antonovka Records, now based in Moldova. This collection features a Chinese Muslim ethnic group called the Dungan who live in the passes between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and surprisingly, they don’t write in Chinese, but in Cyrillic!
From Antonovka’s Bandcamp site:
“Most of the members of the ensemble Yunchi (“Happiness”) live in two Dungan villages in the Chuy region of Kyrgyzstan – Aleksandrovka and Milyanfan. Aleksandrovka is located in the Moskva district to the west of Bishkek. The village was named after the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, during whose reign the Dungans came here. The name Milyanfan means a place where rice grows in Dungan language. Milyanfan is located in the Ysyk-Ata district northeast of Bishkek, not far from the Kazakhstan border.”
Amazing. The ever excellent Antonovka Records are now producing music outside of the former USSR. We have a description of the recordings below, courtesy of the label’s Bandcamp site:
“Gusle (not to be confused with Russian gusli) is a Balkan (mainly Montenegrin and Serbian) bowed instrument. There is only one string on the gusle, but it is always decorated with rich carvings. Those are usually long epic historical songs that are performed with the gusle.
Petar Vujačić comes from the village of Ovtočić (both ‘č’ and ‘ć’ are pronounced roughly as ‘ch’), located in the mountains between the Adriatic Sea and the Skadar Lake. His ancestors had lived in this village for several centuries.”
The now-legendary Antonovka Records have done astounding work documenting music from Russia’s myriad of ethnic communities. This one is from the so-called “Polish” Old Believers in the Altai region. From the label’s Bandcamp site:
“The ancestors of the Altai “Polish” Old Believers were peasants of the Vetka-Starodub territory of the priestly Old Believers, who fled from the persecution of the authorities to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and to the bordering area of the Starodub regiment as part of the Russia. Upon her accession to the throne, Catherine II invited the Old Believers to return to Russia with a manifesto. However, they did not want to. Therefore, in 1764, at the behest of Ekaterina, Vetka was devastated by the troops of Major General Maslov — more than twenty thousand Old Believers were forcibly resettled to Altai and Transbaikalia. In Altai, along the rivers Uba, Ulba, Berezovka, Glubokaya and others, the Old Believers from Vetka and Starodub founded the first settlements in the 1760s, having received the nickname “Polish” in the new place. Now the territory of their residence is divided between Russia and Kazakhstan.”
Antonovka Records produced one of my favorite records of 2022, covering music from the region of Buryatia in Russia. From the label’s Bandcamp page:
“”Erkhuu Khoto” is the Buryat name of the Irkutsk city, where “Khoto” means “City”. Buryats are the indigenous people of this area.
The ensemble “Ayanga” (“Melody” in Buryat) was founded in 1998, the leader is Tsybigmit Damdinzhapova.
The band performs mainly songs of the Irkutsk Buryats, some of which were directly inherited from their ancestors. For example, Evgenia Baldynova learned song 4 from her grandfather. And song 5 was passed on to Petr Saganov from his grandmother Lilia Zhebadaeva, who, in turn, learned it from her grandfather Danchi Nikolaev, born in 1875. And Evgenia and Peter are the oldest (86 years old) and the youngest (27 years old) members of Ayanga respectively.
Some of the ensemble participants moved to Irkutsk from Buryatia and Transbaikal, so particular songs come from there. For example, Onon is a river in Transbaikal territory.”