One Voice

When speaking, N's voice twists out of her mouth like curly pasta, all scalloped edges. You know she's Russian from the minute she talks, but you probably suspected it just by looking at her. Petite like a ballerina, high strong forehead, she wears amazing Indian jewelry all made from heavy interlacing silver. N always has a story to tell, and you can never resist listening. Her voice draws you in, and the tale turns in and over itself just as the syllables do.

We were celebrating a friend's birthday last night, and N said she would sing for us. She stood across the room and arranged her feet as if to pirouette. People were still chatting, nibbling food, shuffling their feet into comfortable positions. But then. A voice ripped out from across the room like thunder across the sky. The room disappeared but for a small Russian woman and the vibrations of her voice.

There is something about listening to someone sing in a language you don't know. The words become sounds, the sounds meld together, and the notes hit you harder because your mind doesn't have to be present--you don't need to assign meaning to what you are hearing. N was singing old Russian folk songs, but to my ears they could have been Maori, or African, or Native American...All I knew was the power there, the strength in what was being conveyed, the feeling of the thing.

When she finished singing, she paused, and then with a perfect sense of timing switched from her diaphragm to her throat and lung voice and said, "so. A little explanation. This song is about war." We laughed because of the amazing contrast. Here was the N we all know. But a moment ago, she had been someone else. Someone from long ago who has learned the secrets of the world in her voice.

She told us of how she learned the songs she sang for us, the words she belted out from her soul. "If you want to learn these songs from the people who know them, you have to bring vodka. When I was in conservatory they told us this. You take the alcohol, and you go to where these men are sitting, and you put the vodka on the table." N twisted her face and body into that of an old man. I could almost see the hat on his head, the beard growing from his chin, the cane he used to walk. She told us of how these men would perk up at the sight of the drink. And after a few, the music students would ask them to sing for them. "But they would sing what they thought would please us, something from the TV." Because the other ingredient, it seems, in order to get folk songs out of an old Russian, is time. You had to wait until the next night, "same story," when you would go back and the same thing would happen again. "'This is very nice,' we said to the men, 'but maybe could you sing for us what your grandparents would sing for you?' But still they would sing something from the TV. Until finally, at one point, you hear what they can sing. Even your hair shivers. And you hope that you have your tape recorder on."

N described a transformation in the men when they sang these folk songs. Suddenly they became young, handsome, sexy, strong. And those listening were the slumped ones with their mouths hanging open. N gestured to the space above her head. "They were up here."

I understand what she meant by this because when she was singing, N was up there, and the rest of us sat here on earth with our mouths ajar, just feeling the amazing notes of her voice.