Aleksandr (Sasha) Kolpakov (right) and Vadim Kolpakov (left, Sasha’s nephew), filmed by the classical seven-string guitarist Oleg Timofeyev.
Soviet singer-songwriters such as the famous Vladimir Vysotsky are routinely referred to as “bards,” but an earlier, perhaps more descriptive term for their work was “amateur songs” [самодеятельная песня]. Their approach to song was as lyricists first, singers second, and guitarists a distant last. (In our North American tradition, think Leonard Cohen more than Bob Dylan.)
But those guitars they hardly played are curious! Many of the best-known bards - including Vystotsky, and Bulat Okudzhava - accompanied themselves on the “Russian,” or seven-string guitar, an instrument that reputedly developed in the East parallel to the Spanish guitar in the West. Its traditional tuning is to an open chord, typically G major, though the bards sometimes changed that to minor, or to an open tuning without major or minor (like our DADGAD).
“Professional” players of the seven-string guitar are not bards, however; they are either classical players, or players of gypsy music. Indeed, the gypsy player Sasha Kolpakov might lead one to question the instrument’s “Russian” roots altogether - it seems so well suited to Roma music, and his technique not unrelated to that virtuoso of the Western six-string, Django…
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