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Tatar Jazz: Rimma Shaikhelova And Her Journey Of Music And Linguistics Intertwined

“I wanted to enchant the listeners, to make them fall in love with this music from the first sight and make it more understandable.”

LIFE IS LIKE JAZZ: WHERE WE ARE FREE TO IMPROVISE…

George Gershwin said “Life is best when you improvise” I recalled this phrase when reading a text on creative visualisation just a day before our conversation with Rimma Shaikhelova. That text told about the need to live here and now, in a flow where you perceive every moment as a blessing, when you push off a given situation seeing such as full of potential for growth. The philosophy of creative visualisation reminded me of improvisation when musicians embrace the given moment and develop the main melody in their own way following the pre- destined musical harmony of chords. We improvise in life too, and in such moments it feels best indeed when we find a balance, taking it from the chords, the melody given by the life itself, and aspire to create on this path.

It is no coincidence that I came across a text about life improvisation on the eve of our conversation with Rimma Shaikhelova, a text that served as a preamble to the interview. After all, its main character is a recognized master of jazz improvisation, a singer, teacher, vocal coach and founder of Tatar jazz. An improviser in life, an innovator in projects, a creator in music and a mentor for many.

In the city of Kazan we were given shelter by the famous house-museum named after Vasily Aksenov, who bequeathed to hold literary and jazz events on the basis of his mansion. Apparently, as if by his will we were drawn to these walls: driven by the interest to reveal the theme of Tatar jazz, in the unity of music and linguistics.

AND WHAT IF ELLA FITZGERALD WAS TATAR…

So what is Tatar jazz? Here we should ask the question that excited the mind of Vasily Aksenov himself: what is jazz in general? “Revelation? Self-expression? Free creative act? Breakthrough? Maybe just an attempt to make a breakthrough,” the writer believed.

An undeniable breakthrough occurred in his house- museum: the Tatar jazz project was born during the long, painstaking work of Rimma Shaikhelova in collaboration with Alfiya Shaidullina: a philologist and compiler of a Tatar dictionary. It was there that the first texts of world jazz standards in the Tatar language were published. As if Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Carlos Jobim were Tatars…And why not!

Shaikhelova and Shaidullina were meticulously choosing the compositions prior to translating them. Some texts did not work well in translation. “We translated numerous songs using the language of Tatar literature, not the spoken one. However, not all of the songs were appropriate for performance. Tatar is incredibly melodic and rich language but sometimes the same phrase sounds more complex in Tatar than in English and needs much more words to convey the same meaning. This can make songs harder to interpret.”

As “Tatar Inform” highlights, this is what happened with a song “A Thousand Things”.  “It features a long succession of words: a pony, an apple pie, and lots of other things that proceed with a phrase ‘My favourite thousand little things’—We could not make that very phrase work at all when translating the song to Tatar.”

Such examples as “A Thousand Things” forced the creator of the Tatar Jazz project to think over the choice of compositions. Music by George Gershwin and Antonio Carlos Jobim did not go unnoticed. As Shaikhelova highlights: “It was a 100% match. This music in particular resonated with listeners.”

The famous “Girl from Ipanema” however, did not hit that list. “We decided not to translate it as this song is already very well known to our listeners. I wanted to take a less famous “Agua de Beber"that became ‘Shifaly Su’ in the Tatar version” The theme of the song found its new incarnation when translated to Tatar and conveyed through the prism of Tatar mentality. ” ‘Agua de Beber’ really spoke to Tatar listeners.Theme of the water is very dear to the Tatars as their central city of Kazan is located on the banks of the Volga River.”

Translation process encompassed a great number of compositions by George Gershwin including “Caravan”. Due to its oriental motifs, the song worked very well in Tatar as well. She said that “In general, translating songs is a very exciting process: familiar compositions renew and appear in the new light like restored paintings”; Later in the conversation, she talked on the importance of preserving the cultures of minorities, also through songs. “Because the language is alive when people speak and sing in it.”

Undoubtedly, one of the rarest and melodic languages of our planet, the Tatar, continues to live thanks to Shaikhelova’s project. And this project is a quintessence of many decades, if we consider the time invested in the creation of the very jazz standards and many years of efforts devoted to their translation.

MAKE TATARS FALL IN LOVE WITH JAZZ! MAKE THE WORLD FALL IN LOVE WITH TATAR JAZZ…

In 2015, Tatar jazz was performed live for the first time, again in the Aksyonov’s house- museum. “The audience received it warmly and friendly. The positive reaction of the audience inspired me to move forward and made me believe that the project has future” recalls Shaikhelova on her first public performance. Later concert venues featured Kazan Philharmonic Hall, Kazan Kremlin, and festivals directed by the leading Tatar artistic director, the founder of Yummy Music record label, Ilyas Gafarov. The Tatar Jazz project also found its place on the pages of the annual Tatar Hanim; calendar issued in Germany by Gulnur Dautova aiming to unite the Tatar women of the world. At one festival, Shaikhelova and her band attracted the attention of a BBC journalist who scheduled an interview with them right after the event.

Undoubtedly, singing in one’s native language is a unique state. Following our request to share her feelings during the very first performance of Tatar Jazz, Shaikhelova admitted: “I didn’t feel anxious at all. Memorising texts was easy since they were in my native Tatar language, and it was easier to convey their meaning for this reason. Perhaps, this is what helped me to relax during the performance and convey songs in the same vein as I wanted them to be heard by people.” She also confessed: “;I wanted to enchant the listeners, to make them fall in love with this music from the first sight and make it more understandable.”’

As far as we know, Shaikhelova’ s project is the first of its kind: before such, the texts of jazz standards were not translated to Tatar in this amount and on such scale. However, the acclaimed singer and the vocal coach modestly admits: “I do not consider myself a founder of this style. The creators of Tatar jazz, to me, are Oleg Lungstrem and Alexander Klyucharev. It is thanks to them that Tatar jazz appeared and Tatar music was born in new interpretations. Being a child, I was listening to this music and fell in love with it.”

 

A RITE OF PASSAGE INTO JAZZ THROUGH SCAT…

The Soviet-era style in the house-museum of Aksyonov, where our conversation took place, made us think about the conditions in which people consumed music before: jazz records were a rare luxury and every sound emanating from them was golden. The connoisseurs caught every sound, every motif, delving into the nuances of breathtaking performances in the records. Perhaps, it is what our time lacks, hyper-saturated with information, including musical, that has become easily attainable and omnipresent. It was the era when people perceived music in general and jazz in particular, with heightened attention, attributing a special value to it. And it is this era that formed Shaikhelova’s musical mentality and perception of the world. She discovered jazz from the records, catching its finest and deepest traits and falling in love with this music forever. Here we move on to the very sacred initiation into jazz that happened in Shaikhelova’s life and, perhaps, in the life of every person reading this article now.

Born in the town of Naberezhniye Chelny, Shaikelova reminisces about the time of her studies in music school years in this fashion: “When they announced the arrival of a jazz vocal coach, I did not understand what they meant. Nobody knew about jazz at that time. Even vocal competitions didn’t have a category of the vocal jazz. For one of my auditions, for instance, I prepared “Yesterday”, a song by The Beatles , considering it to be jazz. I performed it acapella and was admitted to my future vocal jazz teacher, Lia Litvinova.”

Litvinova became a mentor for Shaikhelova introducing the Western world of jazz to her student: “The very first jazz vaccination was done by her!”

Among the first guides into the magical world of jazz for the now prominent singer and vocal coach was also Ella Fitzgerald . “I was listening to her music a lot indeed and she was a great influence on me. Gradually I started to broaden my horizon. Back at that time it was hard, as jazz records were to be ordered from abroad.” However, here the stars aligned: through friends of family and her parents, it was possible to bring the records from Germany. “There were recordings by Dee Dee Bridgewater and Billie Holiday , stars without whom I could not imagine my life. Stevie Wonder and George Benson did not pass me by either. It was difficult to find this kind of music and perhaps that was another reason why we valued and loved it so much. It was a special music, sometimes even prohibited, and maybe that’s why we were so thrilled to learn more about it.”

The revelation of jazz through the rare jazz records continued in Shaikhelova’s life through the discovery of jazz language when Litvinova invited her student to view the upcoming . “I thought this language would be English. I learned German in school, and English was quite new to me. I refreshed all my knowledge of this language before the meeting to better understand the meaning of songs to be heard”. ; But far from it—she gravitated to scat singing, and later on, of course, English and her native Tatar.

“We were sitting on a big red carpet, my teacher turned the record on and the first thing that I heard was the scat by Ella Fitzgerald . What was that sound?! I understood nothing and didn’t know how to perform that. But the sound deeply penetrated into me being an unbelievable energy conveyed on all the levels. I understood that I cannot live without it anymore. I understood that it was my music and it called me” .The first love became the life devotion and profession. Following this sacred moment, Shaikhelova became not only a singer, a coach, but also the acclaimed and demanded master of jazz improvisation, of that very scat that marked her first acquaintance with the world of jazz.

SINCERITY IN THE HEART, SINCERITY IN THE SONG…

Finishing our conversation, we asked Shaikhelova to share her principles of teaching and performing. “Being honest with yourself. It’s what you have to begin with when channelling something in music. Your instrument should not be out of tune under any circumstances: neither in intonation nor in spirit”.  As the second principle, she mentioned “the desire to learn, as a basis of growth”. It is what she teaches and what gives her students an opportunity to develop further independently. “And the third principle”  she added, “is to learn how to work. And then to have a desire to work infinitely. We are that very engine that is capable of transforming, searching, and moving forward.”

As a master of vocal improvisation, Shaikhelova shared the intricacies of this art with us and the difficulties on this pat. h"The mentality of the Tatar people is different because oft heir self- criticism.”. According to Shaikhelova, this self-control, this voice of the inner censor can impede improvisation. “To me, the first and foremost principle of work with students has always been not breaking voices, not aspiring to make them sound identical to each other and not to be afraid of mistakes. Truth is born through trial and error”.

Shaikhelova also highlights the importance of enriching yourself as a vocalist through listening to quality music, copying the existing riffs and runs. The improvisation process is exciting. During my whole experience of teaching, I haven’t encountered identical vocal improvisations. Up to the choice of the vocal syllables, everyone chooses something of their own, unique and close to their inner world." This level of self-trust is important for improvisation. It is what Shaikhelova’s life motto likewise reflects: “Believe yourself, believe in yourself.”

Alongside with music, literature has also influenced Shaikhelova’s perception of the world a lot. The books that played a major role in forming her outlook on life included:
“Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez, “Ulysses”; by James Joyce, “The Godfather”; by Mario Puzo, & “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov.
“This literature influenced me but did not help me to create. Like a bolt from the blue, did I perceive the works by Haruki Murakami, Dostoyevski and others. In that moment, my inner world seemed to be divided. There was my own one, native and calm, as suddenly I entered a very unstable state and started to search for where to move in it. I considered that feeling as pushing me to grow, although on its own, it was not the direct source of inspiration to create something.”

The experience of discovering this new reality was traumatic, although, as Shaikhelova considers, probably necessary. She does not view it negatively and does not consider the alternative reality as undeniably wrong. “I was a home flower that needed an intrusion from the rude world, and suddenly I received it on the side, through literature and films, through the vision of a writer or a director. That vision turned my mind upside down and moved me away from my comfort zone.”; In contrast to the dark reality, coming from the pages of particular works of literature or cinema, the world of music felt even brighter to Shaikhelova, a world that she reached through those very jazz records. “This complex experience helped me feel love for music, helped me to understand that it is a denominator that stabilises you, bringing back to the stream where you feel your identity, where you feel at home. Music for me is a pivoting point, a source of power with which you feel capable of doing everything, that makes it possible to express things and to self- express. And the voice to me is an opportunity to reach the listener, without whom we are nobody.”

Today, it is in this world that Shaikhelova feels the presence of God. “God to me is in music, in love that I feel through such and convey to the listeners, without God all this
would not be possible in my life.”

It is believed that God exists. And probably Vasily Aksyonov, in whose house-museum we discussed the philosophical and linguistic facets of Tatar jazz, continues to live and rejoice on the other side of God’s universe. Rejoicing to the heavens in the ways in which fate realised his will—where jazz and literature interweave, Tatar language meets the language of music, and there continents, nations, and cultures unite in one love. Where the divine resides, the new is born, uniting tradition with discoveries, and music with improvisation. This is how a unique phenomenon appears and continues to live: this is Tatar Jazz.

(Text: Taliya Hafiz)

ABOUT TALIYA HAFIZ

Journalist, singer-songwriter, actress. Author of the documentary about the musical traditions of the Tatars “From Past to Present”, a journalist at “All About Jazz”. As a singer-songwriter, Taliya Hafiz performed in France, Cyprus, England; she was broadcast on BBC and iHeart Radio. Her debut album “Sensations”» received “The Album of the Year” award from Music Durham. She speaks French, English, Russian, Turkish, Tatar, German, and a little bit of Japanese and loves practicing Latin American & Ballroom dances.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taliyahafiz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taliyahafizmusic

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@taliyahafiz?si=AiSL46tJe2ZnXDBJ

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