Yanka Dyagileva

One of the most difficult, disturbing, and hauntingly beautiful voices of Soviet rock, Yanka Dyagileva came to prominence only after her 1991 suicide, when scores of bootlegs and concert recordings rose to the surface. Her romantic and artistic ties with Grazhdanskaya Oborona-founder and Russian punk rock instigator Egor Letov shaped both her life and legacy as first lady of Russian punk, while her folkloric lyrics and melodies tell a somewhat different story. Reissued, re-mastered recordings reveal deep foreboding baselines that rumble like distant thunder behind Yanka's pressing vocals. Tentative guitar riffs strike out and fizzle, but her vocals persist, surrounded by jangly, abrasive instrumentation, the angst-ridden noises of a parallel movement: Seattle-born grunge rock. Yanka's antisocial nature and equally antisocial texts sealed her fate as a virtual unknown during her lifetime; she was suppressed by the Soviet regime, which controlled access to all recording studios. Yana Stanislavovna Dyagileva, known to all as Yanka, was born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk on September 4th, 1966. Her parents noted and nourished her artistic talent from a young age. Her earliest influences, dating back to her school days, included British poetry, and the songs of Boris Grebinshikov. In 1987 Yanka first made the acquaintance of Egor Letov, a famous political troublemaker and founder of the punk rock group Grazhdanskaya Oborona. They spent the summer and fall hitchhiking across the country, holding impromptu performances and recording sessions. Yanka's first public appearance was at a punk festival in the Siberian town of Tumen, where she performed under the name Velikiy Oktyabr (Great October) with Letov, guitarist Igor "Jeff" Zhevtun and drummer Evgeniy "Jackson"...