Peremen

January 18, 2019

Today is day of Russian music.

We had one singer here called Viktor Tsoy. To say he was popular is to say nothing. He is practically the Elvis of USSR. Absolutely everybody who lived in 80s knows about Tsoy and considers him something like a national treasure. Viktor Tsoy sang very social and political songs, highly touching at those times. And he wrote a song “Перемен” (untranslatable to English declension of the word “Changes”, transliteration is “Peremen”).

While this song is cool by itself, what’s even more cooler that it was used as a background for the final titles in a movie. And the visuals for the titles were the sign language translation of the song. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, it looks really powerful, maybe even if you don’t understand the words.

This is not all. In addition to that, this man is actually deaf. So he is singing a song which he (probably) never heard, only read. When I learned, to my shock, about it, I researched a bit and have found that his name is Aleksey Znamensky, and that among all the possible occupations out there he’s an actor and theatre director. Talk about determination!

And finally, here’s the different version of “Перемен”, with different song arrangement and by a whole bunch of people. I’m really interested in whether they actually know the Russian sign language or just memorized the movements and it’s all just a choreography.