Булат Окуджава

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (or Boulat Okudjava/Okoudjava/Okoudzhava; Russian: Булат Шалвович Окуджава) (May 9, 1924 - June 12, 1997) was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author's song&q

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava (or Boulat Okudjava/Okoudjava/Okoudzhava; Russian: Булат Шалвович Окуджава) (May 9, 1924 - June 12, 1997) was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author's song" (авторская песня, avtorskaya pesnya). He was born in Moscow and died in Paris. He was the creator of about 200 songs, set to his own poetry. His songs are a mixture of Russian poetic and folksong tradition and the French chansonnier style represented by such contemporaries of Okudzhava as Georges Brassens. Though his songs were never overtly political (in contrast to those of some of his fellow "bards"), the freshness and independence of Okudzhava's artistic voice presented a subtle challenge to Soviet cultural authorities, who were thus hesitant for many years to give official sanction to Okudzhava as a singer-songwriter.

Bulat Okudzhava was born in Moscow on 9 May 1924 into a family of communists who had come from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, for study and work connected with the Communist Party. Son of a Georgian father and an Armenian mother, Bulat Okudzhava spoke and wrote only in Russian. This was because his mother, who spoke Georgian, Azeri, and of course Armenian, had always requested that everyone who came to visit her house "Please, speak the language of Lenin - Russian". His father, a high Communist Party member from Georgia, was arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge and executed as a German spy on the basis of a false accusation. His mother was also arrested and spent 18 years in the prison camps of the Gulag (1937-1955). Bulat Okudzhava returned to Tbilisi and lived there with relatives.