IGOR MIZRAKH'S UNEASY SIMPLICITY
200 years ago, it was shameful and offensive to explain anything with examples. It has been believed either you don't know how to formulate thoughts, or think your companion is stupid.
It's good the habits have changed; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to express my next thought about Igor Mizrakh, whose work I track and study.
Those who don't miss his concerts and those who're full of malicious irony towards the "singing politician" agree that the songs Mizrakh sings are simple.
However, simplicity is different, as well as musical preferences.
Fans believe the simplicity of Mizrakh's songs, combined with his emotional manner, makes them hits, detractors ask why use the best musicians to create such a traditional pop product.
Throughout history, simplicity (call it adherence to core values) aligns the epoch charts. It brings back the minds and hearts of people to a common denominator, no matter how huge and wild the fluctuations of the morals and standards are.
This is a kind of protective mechanism of humanity, keeping it afloat and protecting it from getting lost in new, no time-tested realities.
The possibilities of high technology have a downside.
In any slightly unusual situation, computer addiction develops into complete helplessness. War, travel, and just an emergency stop at a local power plant turn all the IT geniuses of the world into a whiny crowd.
Someone is trying to lead the human race into the labyrinth of plastic illusion, but everything real and simple appears through the husk of innovations, like muscles through a shirt.
People of high standard need songs of high standard and Mizrakh's songs are a sentence to false hallucinations.
He sings about love and parting, about meetings, courage and friendship, about live things of the living world. You can listen to his songs in the car and at home, hum to yourself both in the bar and in the trench, sing to the guitar by the fireplace and campfire.
Yes, when recorded, they lose their stage shrillness, the «vile time tax" still works, but the "safety margin" of Mizrakh's songs also works and no electronic storage devices can hide their emotions.
That's why Igor Mizrakh's albums are recorded by the best pop musicians. Perfection turns the simplicity of a cart into the simplicity of a Mercedes.
Such simplicity becomes the pillar of the world, it has a taste of wine and bread; it can bandage wounds and knows the real name of offline is "life".
Its truth lives in the world of big real people, keepers and makers of the Manifested Being with big hearts and strong fists. It isn’t afraid of roads and trials away from the Wi-Fi zone. Its place is among those that have been tested by ages and taken to the graves.
Heaven gazes with delight at the hands of a surgeon holding human life at his fingertips.
Neither monitors, nor pandemics, nor Amazon's buy-and-sell store destroyed the crowds near the theatre box office.
People in love don’t run to a sex shop, its high-tech joys await tired hearts and weak bodies.
The military parades are flashing with sabers and bayonets. It should seem funny in the age of drones and combat robots, but nobody laughs.
Complex technologies come to the battlefield and leave the battlefield replaced by new ones, but no computer in the world can unplug a man with a blade.
The world isn't ready to give up at the mercy of the Zuckerberg. It doesn't want to forget the taste of a kiss and cherries from a branch, both the strings of its symphony orchestras and the shots of polygons shout of this to the sky.
Igor Mizrakh's songs belong to this world. Beautiful and alive, like fire and ice, it leafs through technologies, but keeps in its heart the most simple and eternal treasures.
Its favorite characters ride motorbikes or stick shift cars, clap Zippos to light up the darkness, love, fight until they bloody and aren't afraid of losing the phone.
Igor Mizrakh sings for such people.
He sings about such people.
He's one of them.
We don't know what the future will conjure up to us; the vibrations of the world are fast and bizarre.
Perhaps in a few decades, in a tired autumn, the last straight men of the planet will gather in a large stone house by the river. They will cook meat, light a fireplace, drink wine and listen or sing songs the heart remembers.
In our part of the Globe, these will be songs by Igor Mizrakh...