The ensemble LA MINOR was founded in summer 2000.
The ensemble performs in the style of street chanson with Russian folk and Klezmer (Odessa style) influence. Once by the unknown people the style of LA MINOR was named as ..Odessa beats... It s the most precise determination in which LA MINOR live, create and perform.
The music of LA MINOR enriched by bayan (Russian accordion), saxophone, balalaika and tuba brings you back to the atmosphere of 20-40-es Soviet years and reminds the soundtrack to good old films about gangsters, tragic love and great swindlers of that time. Happy and nostalgic in the same time their music will not leave you untouched.
Teeming with thieves and policemen, prostitutes and undercover agents, La Minor's Soviet-era street songs about the urban underworld strike an all-too-familiar chord with local art-house fans. But as the St. Petersburg band has learned on its frequent trips abroad, foreign audiences bring their own life experiences to the music.
The collective consists of professional musicians.
Slava Shalygin, the vocalist, was first exposed to gangster music as a child, and started out as a singer in 1994 with the short-lived rock band Navigators, which split up after performing four concerts at St. Petersburg's pioneering but now-defunct punk club TaMtAm. In the wake of the breakup, he drifted between several colleges and the odd job before forming La Minor in 2000.
A self-taught vocalist, Shalygin was joined by St. Petersburg Conservatory graduate Alexander Yezhov on the bayan, or button accordion, and drummer Pyotr Ketlinsky, who had previously played with the local garage-rock band Kacheli.
Right from the outset, Shalygin set out to emulate urban folk guru Arkady Severny. Severny's genre, now euphemistically known as Russian chanson, surfaced from the music underground after the Soviet Union's collapse, and has since become ubiquitous in popularized renditions on radio stations, at cafes and in taxicabs. But La Minor returns to the music's roots, with the sophisticated arrangements and deadpan delivery that originally marked the gangster sound.
La Minor is known for its careful choice of material, and for ignoring the standards in place of obscure gems of folk poetry.
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