Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 29. Festival

It just became customary that practically all student parties were accompanied by singing. No, it was not choral singing. It would be more accurately to call it group singing. We always enjoyed singing, and sang, as one can put it, with all our hearts. We felt it easy to sing. Perhaps, it was that way, because our life was easy at that time, it was open, without intrigues and ambiguities. The most important thing was that all groups lived without any conflicts, it would be even better to say lived in peace and friendship. Though, each group had its own repertoire.

It will be easier for me to tell about my group. It is important to start admitting that we got lucky from the very beginning. We had Petya Kozlov in our group. As I already wrote, he came to Kemerovo from Belovo and entered not only the Medical Institute, but the Music College of Kemerovo as well, and for one semester he studied in both schools, but later however gave preference to medicine. In his heart he stayed a musician. He played any, I make a special stress on that, any instrument available to us at that time: a piano, button accordion, accordion, harmonica, guitar or balalaika. And how well he played saxophone! It was ecstasy. So, the song repertoire of our group depended on the condition stage, in which the group was. Of course, we started with "Red May Rose". Everyone was doing his best, when making the roulades about how the May rose became ripe, especially that part of the song, in which the girl, from whose name it was sang, confessed that her sweetheart had a terrible character, as because of a trifle, some nonsense, he dumped her and went to the other one. You see, she did not please him. However I believe that the choice of this song was made because the group was mostly male, and subconsciously everyone was indignant by the girls' behavior: "what does it mean, "did not please"? And he did the right thing! - to demonstrate his protest "went to the other one". Each of the guys experienced a similar moment; maybe each of them had a situation in life when she "did not please" him, and he left her for the other one. Well, that was a starting song, so to say. Then there were "A Leafy Mountain Ash" and "Oh, frost, frost" and closer to the end of the party, when the alcohol percentage was close to the top, everyone sang a favorite song of Zhenya Romashov, the one about how "my route eleven is going lonely under the sky". What was the most interesting was that for six years none of us had learned, why Zhenka had tears in his eyes every time we sang that song.

Because we were so much in music, we did not object much, when the Foreign Languages Department offered our group, to be more precise, its male part to sing "Those Evening Bells" at the festival, which the Department held every spring before a successive student group completed a course of a foreign language.

Надя, Света, Наташа и Нелли

Nadya, Sveta, Natasha and Nelly

Well, why not to agree, when the price of the performing of that song was a pass for a semester. And in addition to that we wanted fame, if it was not for a disappointing misunderstanding, who knows, maybe in this photo you would see our faces and a caption "An English Choir". Everything was just fine. At the rehearsals we all together puffed our cheeks out before pronouncing the main words "Bom, bom". We were not upset by that that we failed to learn how to pronounce correctly in English the words "Those evening bells, bom, bom. Those evening beeeels, bom, bom". All of us were confident, that everything would go fine. Though the organizers played a mean trick on us, yes, in its direct meaning, they played the mean trick on us. And how else could we estimate the fact that we were lined up to sing after NASNANE? Just imagine; four girls young and cute, and how well they sang! They were the favorites not only of the course, but of the whole institute. And full house at their performances was the best prove of that. Nadya, Sveta, Natasha and Nelly chose the abbreviation of their names for the name of their quartet: NASNANE.

So it happened so that NASNANE not only warmed up the audience, but also set its expectations about the following numbers very high, the audience did not let them leave the stage for a long time. But finally the curtain went down, and the girls ran away. So we, eleven guys, started lining up to strike our "bom, bom" up. The curtain was raised, and we hardly started singing, as the audience began laughing quietly first and then burst into swelling laughter. As we later learned from the audience, when the curtain was raised, Sasha Salmayer and Vagram Agadzhanyan had their cheeks puffed till the extreme to sing really loud "Bom-Bom". We started singing: "Those evening bells", and Sasha and Vagram joined us with "Bom-Bom", and then we continued: "Those evening bells", and then all together for some reason three times "Bom-Bom-Bom", though it was supposed to be only two times. The audience was literally lying; the roar of laughter was even louder than applause after the performance of NASNANE. So we broke and started retreating behind the curtain. The curtain was dropped. The audience was roaring for quite a long time after that. Maybe they were happy for us. And we even did not manage to sing the first verse till its end. From the stage one could go down directly to the audience hall or go downstairs to the gym and only then enter the audience hall via the entrance. We chose the second way to leave the stage.

A credit had to be given to the Foreign Languages Department - we nevertheless received the pass.

july 20, 2011

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
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Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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