There are a number of very strange but wonderful singers in the world, as 5 minutes surfing on Youtube will show you, but one of the strangest and most enchanting of them is Gennady Tkachenko-Papizh who was born in Petropavlosk in Kamchatka (Russia) but who has lived most of his life in the Ukraine.
For most of his adult life he has worked as an animal impersonator and singer, and been modestly successful in both endeavours apparently. But of late he has come to our attention thanks to his taking part in the Ukraine’s version of “………. has talent”, in which he has introduced the world to his very individual way of singing, which he describes as Earth Sounds.
This consists of a mix of animal and bird imitations and a very unique and haunting form of singing – All very New Age and meditative. He mixes a whole range of musical genres into a huge acoustic construction. Highly meditative, but not sleepy by any means. As you will see in this typical example of his work, he ranges widely over a huge and highly coloured acoustic wilderness (for want of a better term).
As is often the case with this sort of musician, there is a sort of monotony about what he does, a certain sameness, but for us this is unimportant, as what he has done is so powerful and is absolutely a sound cloud that lends itself ideally to meditation, but in a more directed and intrusive fashion than, for example, Alpha Rhythms.
The first time I heard this guy’s singing, I was absolutely captivated, and promptly hunted up loads more of his music to get a wider feel of what he does. Luckily for me (and you) there is no end of material online about his work. So if you Google his name you will be offered a multitude of videos, recordings, articles and so on.
So to finish this short post, I will offer you a couple more examples of his work, to get you onto the right track to go further and find more of his very pleasing and captivating music.
As you will now see, he is by no means always “ethereal” , he has also been very successful as a sort of very odd clown, as this video will demonstrate.
See what I mean? Quite an act isn’t it?
But back to the work I really wanted to show you….
Once you get past the intro in this video, he then explains exactly why and what he does… And he puts it much better than I ever could. So sit back and discover his take on why and what he does..
And now to finish off, here he is again, this time on one of those God Awful Has talent shows… With all the normal stuff around it, but he does manage to captivate that audience reasonably quickly… Here he is.
I hope that you found this unique and curious performer interesting, and enjoyed his very curious approach to his art.
OZTHOUGHTS 