Igor Rasteryaev personal biography. Igor Rasteryaev: “Some miracles began

Igor Rasteryaev is a singer with an attractive appearance and an open soul. He gained all-Russian fame in 2010, when a video for his author's song "Combiners" appeared on the Internet. Would you like to get acquainted with the biography and work of this young man? Are you interested in his personal life? The article contains the necessary information.

Igor Rasteryaev: biography, family

Born on August 10, 1980 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His father - professional artist. The man is a hereditary Don Cossack. He comes from the village of Rakovka, in the Volgograd region. Igor's mother received a higher technical education. She is a native of the Northern capital. It was there that she met her future husband, who came to Leningrad to study.

Igor Rasteryaev, whose biography we are considering, loves his parents very much. They are an example for him. Our hero has a sister, whose name is Catherine. A few years ago, the girl married her beloved boyfriend Sergei.

Childhood

In the homeland of his father, in the village of Rakovka, Igor Rasteryaev spent every summer. Songs, folk dances and local landscapes - all this had a strong influence on the boy. It was there that he learned to play the harmonica and the guitar.

Igorek considered Rakovka his second homeland. With the onset of summer, he wanted to quickly leave the noisy city in order to go to a quiet and calm rural outback.

In 1987, Igorek went to first grade. At first he studied at school No. 189, and then at school No. 558. The boy rarely got bad grades. And I tried to fix them as soon as possible. The future artist read a lot, looked through art films. All this provided him with all-round development.

His favorite subject at school was OBZH. And all because the teacher regularly organized cultural and entertainment trips for his students. One day, Igor and his classmates got the opportunity to visit the training ground (in Aspen Grove) and shoot at targets. Of course, the guys were under the control of experienced instructors.

Who did Igor Rasteryaev want to become? The biography says that in high school he became seriously interested in journalism. After the theatrical direction appeared within the walls of the institution, his plans changed. Our hero, along with other guys, participated in productions, including those in English.

Student

After graduating from school, Igorek applied to SPbGATI, choosing the acting department. His natural artistry and sociability were appreciated by members admission committee. As a result, the guy was enrolled in the university. Rasteryaev was considered one of the the best students on the course. The teachers were sure that a bright future awaited him. In 2003, Igor graduated from the university with a red diploma.

Creative activity

The SPbGATI graduate had no problems with employment. He was accepted into the troupe of the Buff Theater. On the stage of this institution, he played many diverse roles (comedy, drama). Most often he had to get used to the image of alcoholics. But our hero approached this with humor.

A talented person is known to be talented in everything. Igor Rasteryaev also belongs to this category of people. Songs are not the only form of his work. A native of the Northern capital managed to star in several films. Many of you could see him in the series "Secrets of the Investigation-6", as well as in the films "June 22. Fatal Decisions” and “The Dog Lost”. Igor's colleagues film set were: Lykov Alexander, Kovalchuk Anna and others.

Fame

According to our hero, he never wanted to become a star. But fate had other plans for him. All-Russian popularity for Igor was brought by his author's composition "Combiners". This happened in 2010. An old friend of Rasteryaev, Alexei Lyakhov, invited him to perform his song. He filmed everything that happened on his phone. The singer did not even think that his friend Lesha posted a video on YouTube. In just 3 months, this clip has gained over 1 million views. Why did the video filmed in an ordinary kitchen bribe the audience so much? First of all sincerity and simple.

In 2012, the "folk" singer was offered to participate in qualifying rounds to Eurovision from Russia. However, the young man refused. This greatly upset his fans.

In 2015, Rasteryaev celebrated his 5th anniversary on a grand scale singing career. During this time, he managed to travel around many cities in Russia, as well as visit Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Now Igor holds no more than 3 concerts a month. The main place of his work is the St. Petersburg theater "Buff".

Igor Rasteryaev: personal life

Our hero is a nice guy with a good sense of humor and artistic talent. He never had a problem with a lack of female attention. Both in high school and at the university, girls ran after him.

In 2012-2013 in an interview with the print media, Igor stated that his heart was free. Allegedly, due to constant performances and tours, the guy does not have time for his personal life. Soon the situation changed. Our hero met a worthy girl. Unfortunately, her name, surname and occupation are not disclosed. The couple has not yet officially formalized the relationship. They don't have children. But in the near future, the lovers are going to start a family and have a baby.

Achievements

What results can Igor Rasteryaev boast of? The albums recorded by him were sold out by fans in a short time. In total, our hero released four records: "Russian Road" (2011), "Ringer" (2012), "Songs of Uncle Vasya Mokhov" (2013) and "Horn" (2014).

Since the whole country found out about Igor, 6 years have passed. During this time, he gave dozens of concerts, participated in several TV shows and acquired a whole army of fans. There is no doubt that the main creative victories await the young man ahead.

And the "folk" singer wrote a book about his biography and work. It is called "Volgograd Faces". The presentation of the book took place in December 2012.

Finally

We reported where Igor Rasteryaev was born and how he became a national favorite. The biography of our hero is good example as talented person(without special musical education) can become an Internet star. We wish him more hits and loyal fans!

St. Petersburg Church Bulletin "Living Water", No. 4, 2011

The color of Rasteryaev's songs is inspired by the life of the Volgograd village, where Igor spends every summer since childhood. This Cossack homeland his father and permanent place residence of his farm friends. In St. Petersburg, the artist lives in an ordinary residential area. Igor Rasteryaev came to the meeting with his friend Alexei Lyakhov, who makes all the videos of the Internet star, calls himself a “producer in quotation marks” and answers the question about the promotion strategy in this way: “You write that this all happened by the will of God. Otherwise it wouldn't work. An ordinary gathering in the kitchen, filmed with a phone. The rest of the clips were filmed in the steppe. Today it is difficult to surprise people with something, and suddenly everyone liked such simplicity "...

I did not go to the singers

—Igor, you have already decided which musical direction do you regard yourself?
I'm not really a musician, I don't know a single note. I play the accordion by touch, I hit the keys for good luck. In general, he did not determine the style of his work in advance and, like all listeners, looked with surprise at what came out of it. After all, six months ago, I didn’t even think about making music. He worked in the theater, at home he drew and wrote books about his Volgograd friends. When all the hype rose, they began to ask for concerts. And with what to perform? With one random song "Combiners" and three obscene ones that I wrote back in my student years? Uncle Vasya Mokhov came to my aid. He has the song "Rakovka", I knew it and performed it on the harmonica. Uncle allowed me to take her for a concert, plus I wrote two new songs: "Daisies" and "Cossack". For the next performance, “Russian Road” appeared, then “Bogatyrs” ...

—In the Orthodox environment, one can hear disputes about your work. Some of your songs, about ordinary people and about native land, take for the soul, while others, buffoonish, with obscene expressions, repel.
-What to say? If you don't like it, don't listen to it at all. At first, I myself did not know in which direction creativity would lean, either it would be a cheerful banter, like the very first songs, or a socio-patriotic theme that crawled out of me in the end. Then it became clear that seriousness outweighed. And I did not include songs with obscene language in my first album in order to support the emerging theme.

—Some do not believe that you were born in the city. Sort of like a "nugget from the village."
— Let them think so, I would support it in every possible way. Daisies and emptiness — How do you see yourself more as an urban or a farmer? Such different worlds, and you are your boyfriend everywhere. The worlds are the same. There is no difference, only life is different. And in my songs I don't idealize anything. Here is the song "Daisies", what kind of idealization is there? On the contrary, the alarm in the endangered Russian village.

—In "Daisies" there are lines about the guys who were ruined by drunkenness: "The guys chose this path for themselves, but still, by God, someone pushed them and set them up." What was the impetus for this?
“It all started with a revolution. There had never been such general drunkenness and unemployment before, this can be seen, if only from the fact that the entire Don steppe was covered with small farms, continuous settlement, all the land in the district was cultivated. Normally lived, family. The farmsteads survived even after the war, and finally disappeared after the enlargement of the collective farms. Now you are driving - vast deserted spaces, there are few villages, there are no farms, as in the Wild Field in the XIV century.

—Who can inhabit these territories? Is there a problem of visiting strangers on the Cossack lands?
—In Rakovka, where my relatives live, there are Meskhetian Turks who were accepted as refugees 20 years ago. Now they are half the population. The mosque is going to be built earlier than the Orthodox church.

—That is, there is no church in Rakovka?
-On the territory of the entire region, the pre-revolutionary temple remained only in Razdory. Everything else in last years built. And the old discordant church does not correspond to the current parish in its scale. When it was built, the village was huge: thousands of people lived in it. There was a yurt station! But it has long been renamed into a farm, few people live, there are very few young people. The temple only reminds of its former glory. And church life in the area is concentrated in the city of Serafimovich, where there is the Ust-Medvedev Monastery with its shrines, underground passages. Everyone goes there.

—I understand that you keep your distance from the Church?
“I myself try to somehow communicate directly with God, but I treat the Church with respect. It seems to me that the Church reflects the soul of the people. Take a Catholic church here. Everything is decorous, the organ plays, you can sit. They are at parties the same way: they will take a glass and scatter in the corners. And we have candles, icons, a choir, everything is in gold, the bells are ringing! Holiday! This is our way! There is theatricality in this, it is close to us. I remember being baptized. They dipped it, I grabbed the father by the beard, I thought they would drown him! Pulled out.

Let's get acquainted

—On one of the sites, I came across a story that you set out to find a family nest - a farm that your ancestor founded. We found this place in the steppe, marked it with a cross, and called relatives. For what?
— We are ethnic Don Cossacks from Riding Yurts, Razdorskaya village on the Medveditsa River, Rasteryaev farm. As a child, my father told me that there was such a farm Rasteryaev, then a priest came there to live, and the farm began to be called Popovsky. In all sources, the farm is listed as Popovsky. I sent inquiries about my ancestors Rasteryaevs to various archives: to Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, to the Moscow Military Historical Archive. Finally, he came across the Moscow historian Sergei Koryagin, who is engaged in the history of the Don Cossacks. He turned out to have a map of the late XVIII - early XIX century, which is not yet railway Moscow - Volgograd. And there I saw in black and white it was written “Khutor Rasteryaev”, that is, the family tradition was confirmed. We photographed the card, reproduced it, I showed it to all my relatives. And we decided to put a cross on the site of our native farm.

—And what was the meaning of it?
- It's a memory. In the Volgograd region, in almost every village, there is a cross at the entrance and exit. The inhabitants of the village of Razdorskaya on Medveditsa were the first to put it. A mirror cross, an iron base and pieces of a mirror are driven into the cement. When you go, you see how it burns in the sun. They say that mirrors should reflect all adversity from the village.

—Christianity in half with folk signs.
“But what about such a culture ... And so we also wanted to put an end to it. It’s hard to find a place, there’s not even stoves (the stoves are a stone, clay or wooden felling base for a stove. - Approx. ed.), there are only hillocks and a garden in the steppe. An aunt lived in a neighboring farm, who still remembered my grandfather (my grandfather was the chairman of the collective farm until the 1950s). And she showed me the exact location. It is only possible to determine by the hillocks where the huts stood. The farm is small, in the 19th century there were 23 yards. When I decided that it was time to take up the cross, I went to the Medveditsa River, swam to the other side, felled a wonderful oak tree, sawed it off and melted the logs along the river. And he sailed on them. He dragged the logs to his hut, hewed them a bit and told dad, they say, so and so, there is a basis for the cross. They connected with the uncle, polished it, the father burned out the inscription: “Here stood the Popovsky farm, until the 19th century it was called Rasteryaev.” Went and installed. Then a cousin from the city of Kalach-on-Don found out that we had carried out this action. And he liked it so much that next summer he welded a new cross, an iron, capital one. More people have already arrived. They put it on the other side so that there was a cross at the entrance and exit. The second cross was already fixed with concrete and a bottle was placed at the base, for posterity - who and when dug in the cross ... Another year passed, and we decided to get together with relatives. They recruited 40-45 people from all over the Volgograd region.

—Are families big?
- My great-grandfather had nine children, each of these children also had several, my grandfather had four. We called our close relatives, they are theirs, with whom they communicate ... It was interesting to see everyone at once! Even my dad didn't see half of these relatives. I go out of the garden, I look - there is a caravan of cars. All at once in the steppe stop, several dozen people get out of them. The feeling is amazing, as if passers-by were raked from a tram stop, brought in and said: “Here are your relatives, they are all equally relatives.” But you look a little closer and you see that this one is a little more attractive to me, but this one is somehow interesting ... They also look at us, study us. Relationships are starting to form. Then we lit a fire, set up tents, caught a large catfish in Medveditsa, cooked fish soup. They brought grapes, bream. I just happened to be with an accordion, the gatherings lasted until the next noon. We spent the whole night together. I don’t think it’s worth practicing this every year, but it’s necessary to get together every few years. Update coordinate system.

—Is such a meeting with your northern maternal relatives possible?
— From this side, there are much fewer connections, firstly, because of their smaller number, and secondly, half of them live in Estonia. But we are slowly rebuilding our relationship. My maternal great-grandfather was Finn. Because of this, everything was not easy in the grandmother's family. The younger brother of the great-grandfather in the very first days of the war, surrounded by Leningrad, went missing. The middle sister was sent to Siberia for being Finnish. And the Finn great-grandfather himself was not sent to Siberia, they were not taken to fight, they were not given work, they were not allowed to leave. He died of starvation in besieged Leningrad. Lies on the central alley Piskarevsky cemetery, which we learned half a century later, when the Book of Memory was being made. I come home, and there is a postcard for my grandmother: "Your father lies in such and such a grave."

—And when there was a census, each member of your family wrote down their nationality: father and son are Cossacks, sister is Ingrian, mother is Russian. To many today this will seem like unnecessary "subtleties". Wouldn't the common name "Russians" be enough for all of us?
“I am categorically against calling everyone Russians. When the census takers came, I asked my relatives by phone who wants to be recorded by whom, they themselves decided. After all, why did we put a cross in the steppe? Nationality is the root base of a person. Everyone should know exactly where he comes from: from the steppe or from the city, a Cossack or a Pomor. As soon as the winds of change blow, only a powerful root base can hold a person. So that he would not be a tumbleweed, he would not ride a “Russian” in the wide world. From patriotic lyrics, accordion tunes and intimate stories, an image of a new celebrity was formed. Igor Rasteryaev is not a distant glamorous "star", but his boyfriend for both the townspeople and the inhabitants of the outback. For his songs, he takes topics that are close and dear to everyone, but so senselessly "hackneyed" that it would seem that there is nothing to say about them: about soldiers who died in the war, about village drunkenness, about the difficult life of rural hard workers. But Rasteryaev has words that “cling” many. family traditions. The visual symbol of the human root system in the stories of Igor Rasteryaev turned out to be a cross. They, sometimes unconsciously, are clinging to the land inherited by the current villagers. They are protected, denoting their possessions. The Cathedral Church was expelled from the devastated lands and has not yet returned to the hearts of the villagers. But the cross lives on. And he gathers around him people who again want to be close relatives to each other.

Julia Nurmagambetova

and the performer - about why he did not become a journalist and how songs are born, about his favorite harmonica and Cossack roots, politics federal TV channels and a sense of national unity.

- Igor, you have already been interviewed several times by church media, for example. But somehow, when reading an interview with you in one Orthodox magazine, there was a feeling that they were trying to artificially attract you to themselves: they say, look: “this is also our man.” Whose do you feel yourself to be?

– (Laughs.) His. In principle, I am not inclined to any camp, I did not fall under anyone's banner. I would like to stay under mine. Naturally, I have certain sympathies. Thank you very much to the Soyuz TV channel, by the way, for inviting me. They supported me a lot, so I thank them from me.

Let's put the question straight. I would like to talk to you about Orthodoxy, faith, but just don't push it. We don't need formal godly answers. What do you believe in? In yourself? In friends? For luck? Maybe into something else?

- I believe in God.

– Many people say: “I believe in God”, but when you start talking to a person, you understand that… Americans, for example, have the words “we trust God” written on their dollars. And who is your God?

- I will say this: I believe in His absolute strength and in my absolute human weakness. Because what happened to me, all this sudden song popularity is nothing but the intervention of a higher power. Because on purpose, by one's own human attempts and desires, such a story cannot be made in such a short time. I think that it was just someone who took it and let it down like that, gave it to me. Moreover, very quickly, in the shortest possible time. Because I never wrote any songs before. And here it turned out that so many songs were written in such a short period of time and this whole story went.

- So you think that this is the Providence of God?

- That's for sure.

- Does it show up in any other way? Did you feel that he somehow guides you through life?

- All life.

– Do you already understand what he is leading you to or where?

– (Laughs.) No. I just hope for good.

Have you ever dreamed of becoming famous? If yes, in what field? What did you dream of doing as a child?

- It would be strange if I said that I did not dream of becoming famous - because I went to Theatre Institute. Apparently, there was some craving for acting, for fame, maybe - for something like that. But what exactly I did not expect was that all this would come to me sometime and it would come through the accordion, through music. When they call me a musician, it still seems to me ... amazing.

– Is it true that before that you almost became a journalist?

- I went to the Theater Institute also in order not to study at the Faculty of Journalism. At that time, I almost entered the Faculty of Journalism, I had already completed preparatory courses, I already even had a recommendation from the admissions committee. Here. But at the Faculty of Journalism I would have to learn English language and some other things that I didn't like. You should really study there. It would be impossible, as in the Theater Institute, to pretend to be talented for three years, or somehow highly spiritual, or artistic there, and everything would be written off for you. At the faculty of journalism, all things are specific, English is the same.

- A musical education do you have?

– No, I don’t have a musical education, I simply don’t have anything special.

- How do you feel about music? Through kinesthetics?

- Through what?

- Through kinesthetics: that is, through sensations, through fingers, as if through the skin.

– (Wags away.) No. It's just music in the head is born itself. And you pick up the harmonica - you get a melody for a song.

What comes first in your work: poetry or music?

- Music.

- There is an opinion, on the same Internet, in the comments to the clips, that your music is of the same type. Although, maybe it's just the author's decision, moreover, intentional, so that people do not pay attention to the music, but hear the text and think?

- Due to some kind of my ignorance, indeed, I come up with music that is somewhat of the same type or one-rhythm. Either it's because I don't know how to play a musical instrument well, or I use one musical instrument- accordion. It can be stylistically monotonous, if you take it by melodies, but I don’t think that it is the same. That is, if the melodies are correctly decomposed, then the melodies themselves, I think, are still different.

Or maybe we just don't have the ear.

– (Laughs.) This is fine.

Is creativity for you a job or a service?

Whatever you put into the accordion, whatever melody you like - in the end everything will be about the Russian road. She, an accordion, is a patriotic instrument.

Everything is divided into two parts. The first is when a new melody is invented. So you scored it on an accordion, and you have it in an accordion version. The theme is formed. But then again, as I say all the time, whatever you stick into the accordion, whatever melody you like - in the end everything will be about the Russian road. She, an accordion, is patriotic, the instrument itself is patriotic. The theme, the theme of the songs - it is dictated by the instrument. And when the topic has already been found, work on the text begins. Here it is already real work, it can last a year, and even more than a year. There is a blank, a blank. And everything is clear to you, even the musical time signature is clear. How many verses you need, you already know - six verses, no more and no less. time signature such and such. The theme is also clear. And there are two or three lines, and what is between them, that is, the text, is already work beginning, it is already hard. I have, at least.

- There is an opinion that genius differs from talent in that a person owns a talent, and a genius owns a person. Can you not write? Or is it your inner need: “to write is like breathing”?

– May I not write? Yes. Certainly can. (Laughs.) How can I not? Easy! Although ... I can say that I can not write, but the melodies will be born in parallel. I can not bring to mind for a long time what is born in my head besides me - in the form of music, some themes, ideas. They can lie down for a long time, I can not give them practical output. But they will still grow. Melodies are initially born somehow subconsciously. That is, initially the melody is born on the road, sings to some stupidity. When the head does not work at all. What you see is what you eat. And you are fooling around at this moment, that is, you are, as it were, a little bit even ... something foolish is present at the moment of the birth of the melody itself. Because these melodies initially had nothing to do with the patriotic theme and do not have. That is, it is initially some kind of stupidity. There is no meaning, there is only a melody and some kind of flight of the brain, the connection that now you have a melody born. And then, when this melody hits the harmonica, here the harmonica begins to load it with all sorts of themes, meanings and the like.

– What is the purpose of your creativity? Is there one at all? Or is it just self-expression? Nabokov - I'm not sure that I will quote close to the original - has these words: "I am writing new book in order to quickly finish writing and start a new one. Or remember the words of Porthos: "I fight because I fight." Does creativity have any purpose at all?

“It's more of a self-expression. I don't have this, you know: "I want to change the world for the better." I don't quite understand this. For me, it's more like just some kind of internal need, I see the essence of it.

- Do you just want to sing?

– Do you remember the feeling of your first concert in Moscow?

- I agreed adventurously, for me it was like having fun, I thought: this is the first and last concert. All my homies thought the same. They pulled themselves up to Moscow just to hang out, to watch. We thought it would be funny and interesting. But a week or two before this first concert, I suddenly realized that, apart from five songs, I actually had nothing. I came up with two more songs for the first concert: "Daisies" and "Cossack". Well, again, how to say: I came up with it - the melodies were there for a long time, they were maybe a year or two old, there were themes, but there was no text. Therefore, it was necessary specifically to this very date to gather myself into a fist and try to put these texts together. The song "Daisies" turned out to be harder, it was born very, so to speak, painfully. The song "Cossack" was originally planned in the Kalmyk language. I didn’t know what to sing yet, but I understood that it was a good melody.

– Do you know the Kalmyk language? Was it easier to learn than English?

- No, I do not know. But I didn't know what to write about. And then he simply turned to the Kalmyks. (Laughs.) The Kalmyks turned me around, they said... and I asked them on VKontakte for a translation of the poems that were sketched like this, but then I had a photo on my avatar in which I was bare-chested and with a saber. The Kalmyks looked at it and said that I was... a troll. Somehow they didn’t accept me genetically in this image. I was offended then, I said that from now on everything with the Kalmyks is over with me. I turned to the translation agency to translate it into Turkish for me, they translated it for me, but I read it and realized that I would never learn it and sing it, not in a week, not in a year - what was written there. And then I just took and rewrote my poems a little - and the text turned out " Cossack song". She threw herself, as they say, from the bulldozer. There was practically no work on the text. The melody is very catchy. It is sung on behalf of a fifteen-year-old teenager who, in principle, does not build his speech, but throws it in a severe emotional way. Maybe this is where everything coincided, by emotion.

– You say that your creativity has no definite purpose. is creativity. Does life have a purpose? What do you want in life? What are you dreaming about?

- In life - yes, there is. I would like the material that has accumulated, that is, to be turned into a form to the maximum, that is, either into songs, or into another book, or something else. So that what you saw, what you were given to experience, to understand something there, is to give birth to everything somehow in an artistic holistic finished form.

- Your text inserts between songs are very capacious, sharp, precise, sometimes bitter, sometimes funny. You have literary talent. Aren't you afraid that you killed a talented writer or journalist in yourself?

For me, any activity that would be put under any danger of cutting has always caused some kind of rejection.

- Don't think. If I had gone to study as a journalist, then maybe it would have discouraged me from writing in general. Because for me, any activity that would be put under any danger of cutting and would be cut at some point in my life, always caused some kind of rejection, dissonance in the initial desire for this.

- So you do not recognize any laws, imposed rules? Maybe you are a revolutionary at heart?

- Don't think.

- But you once said in previous interviews that because of your views you are not allowed on federal TV channels, on television in general ...

Federal TV channels have their own policy, I have my own policy with an accordion. Combination is not always possible.

– I don’t think it’s because of some of my views that they don’t let me in. It's fine without me. It’s just that sometimes there are, let’s say, proposals to come and stay, as it were, with another performer, attached. So that your idea is attached to some main idea that the channel puts there. Or some other conditions are set: to sing to the phonogram or something else. Or sing not their own song, but as if in their supposedly some kind of image, as they see it. That is, they offer to do something that is not quite characteristic of me, to look not quite who I really am. It's not very interesting to me. Therefore, I wrapped up several such, so to speak, proposals. But the Kultura TV channel, for example, or the same Soyuz channel - I like them, that's another matter. I'm on them in mine natural form sang. He sang the way he really is. It was not necessary to do anything, not to add any instruments, not to make any arrangements, not to put some kind of show ballet in the back, so as not to stand out in the general concert. Everything was natural. It's just that the federal channels have their own policy, a general one. This is absolutely normal. I have my own harmonica policy on this. It is not always possible in some combination, so what is there to say ...

- Have you been invited to the Kremlin to play along at any other concert?

- To the Kremlin... I don't remember.

How well do you know your ancestors? Who were they?

- I know I know. All Cossacks. Paternal ancestors were all Cossacks. Grandfather, his great-grandfather Vasily Yakovlevich - a Cossack, then Yakov Ivanovich. I don't know further. Further, I know from the metrics of our church, in the Rasteryaev farm, that there were a lot of Rasteryaevs. Khutor Rasteryaev was like that. Well, how to say ... farms, they moved away from the villages. At our village, the family is Razdorskaya-on-Medveditsa. There are two Razdorsky. First: Razdorskaya-on-Don - the former capital of the Don Cossacks was ancient. Second: Razdorskaya-on-Medveditsa - our ancestral village, the upper one. There were a lot of Rasteryaevs there, they printed out the metrics for me, but I can’t even say who they are. It is already difficult to calculate who was who - this is the 17th-18th centuries.

- What kind of Russia does Igor Rasteryaev want to see? What would you change in it?

- I want spring. (Laughs.) Even more good, even happier, even more wonderful and beautiful. I can't do it any other way. I do not know how to answer.

“A poet in Russia is more than just a poet.” You travel a lot around the country, communicate with the simplest people, you also sing about ordinary people, simple things - close to everyone, understandable to everyone. Answer this question. There are now two opposing opinions on what is happening with Russia: some say that Russia is dying, others - that Russia is being revived. What do you think is happening now?

- I can only say this: I have a feeling of a whole nation. But, again, how do I communicate and who do I see? I see people who come to the concert. It is in every city by type approximately the same people. They are in, in Ryazan, in Vladivostok, for some reason general type close, these people.

- At your concert, we saw very different people: different ages and social position. What exactly do you mean when you say they are similar?

– They can be different. But I mean, if you compare, say, cities, what people are like. I don't always have time to see the cities themselves. But I manage to see people at the concert. There are some cities in which, by the will of fate or the concert schedule, we stay for two, three days or even more and manage to climb everything in them, and then there is a clear idea about this city, the place where you ended up. But there are cities that you do not have time to see, understand. But the people who come to the concerts are somewhat similar.

– But nevertheless, in your circle, what is the greater feeling: rebirth or death?

I am not inclined to share any panic moods, there is no feeling of an apocalypse.

- In my circle, a normal feeling. Here among my peers, by the way... those who are even younger, there is no such thing that... how can I tell you... I can say that they drink much less. Now I even look at young people: they drink less. Even less than we drank than me or my peers at their age. I can definitely say for myself that I do not have utopian views on the present and the future. I am not inclined to share any panic moods.

- Is there something that a Russian person, so to speak, lacks to move up?

- It's always there. I'm just saying that there is no feeling of an apocalypse, that everything is bent. , of course, bends, survive there in spite of.

- Was there a city where you were not accepted? Or didn't you understand?

- Where did they not understand me? So-so-so... A city where they didn't understand me... I can say. For me, it was a surprise ... we did a concert in Mikhailovka, in Uryupinsk, right next to Rakovka, in the Volgograd region, and then I imagined myself, I thought that since all the songs are sung about that region, there must be some kind of special reception, which something special like “A-a-a-a-a-a-a!”. But everything turned out to be exactly the opposite. That is, I have not had a more restrained - benevolent, but restrained - reception anywhere. The countrymen reacted more reservedly, for example, than in Arkhangelsk or somewhere in the North, where they have nothing in common with the steppes and harvesters, or with Volgograd, or with the Don.

- Before the first clip, even before the Buff Theater, which you have already mentioned in many interviews, what did you do? I wonder how Igor Rasteryaev started?

We traveled around the cities of Moscow and Leningrad regions, gave children's performances in frozen recreation centers, in abandoned cinemas ...

“I have always been an artist. In the theatre. Always. After school - immediately to the Theater Institute, studied there for five years. And for a year he traveled with the White Theatre. It was such a school of life. We traveled to all the cities of the Moscow and Leningrad regions, gave children's performances in frozen recreation centers, in abandoned cinemas, and village houses of culture. This is the most collapse when it was after the 1990s. Dressed up in some homemade costumes, brought children to these frozen recreation centers. The children tied their hats, sat playing Tetris in mittens, tried to hit us in the eye with a laser pointer. In a word, like all normal children, they showed interest in art. And we played. I was a crocodile. My suit didn't really have a mouth, so I just went out and said, "I'm a Crocodile." I had steam coming out of my mouth from the cold. And behind the tiger cub ran, danced, because he was in a short tights, thin, and he was very cold, so he kind of pretended to be active, but in fact it was just warming up. And the teachers at the back said: "The tiger cub is playing well." Then he already got to the theater "Buff", where this year it has already been 10 years since he served. Lost, to be exact. My life has always gone smoothly, without sharp turns.

- You are not one of those artists who order expensive clips for themselves, you mainly use amateur filming. Who shoots and edits your videos?

- Lekha Lyakhov is my friend. He filmed all my videos that are on YouTube. All my songs: and "Combiners" the first recording on the phone, and all the other videos. He now lives in Moscow. Arrives when new song is born. We go with him to shoot something, then we sit and edit together. The video sequences that are shown at concerts from projectors were also edited by Lekha. There is a secret here: there is a mirror in the hall so that I can see what is shown in the background on the video at one time or another; it is necessary that the articulation coincides in some places, especially where there are cartoons.

- How many harmonicas did you exhaust during your trips?

– The one I play now is the original harmonica. "Gull". I play all gigs on it. She in Lately pours constantly - breaks, in the sense. The metal levers break, the buttons ...

- Keys?

I try to play exactly that harmonica at every concert: it is squeaky, such sharp voices on it - I like that in it.

Yes, keys. Voices fly. But this is the wear of the metal. She was bought in a commission shop at the time. In my opinion, by the way, they had not played it before, because the furs were still glued together. And now she is now, with regularity, after two or three concerts, welling up. There is always a spare harmonica. But I try to play it at every concert, because it is squeaky, such sharp voices on it - I like that in it. She is very dear to me.

- Do you smoke?

Family, wife, children?

- If you suddenly stopped performing, what would you do then?

- I probably would have worked at Buff.

- And if for some reason you could not perform in public in principle?

I think I would draw. If I could draw, I would draw. Or try to write something.

- Without unnecessary pathos - thank you for being like this, with your thoughts. Thank you for your creativity.

- Thank you. Hi all!

Encyclopedic YouTube

• 1 / 5

  In 2012, Igor released the book "Volgograd Faces" (an album of drawings with the author's comments). The book is dedicated to Lyokha Lyakhov. October 20, 2012 the second album "Ringer" is presented.

  At the beginning of 2013, "Ringer" was re-released, and, as already mentioned, the guitar album "Songs of Uncle Vasya Mokhov" was released. IN 2014 - new album"Horn".

  Thus, Igor does not stop writing songs - he already has (as of mid-2016) more than twenty of them, not counting the early "obscene" ones. Each new song, like the very first ones, is first released as a video on YouTube, then presented at a concert. Clips are still directed and filmed by Lyokha Lyakhov. From a primitive, but captivating by its immediacy phone, he moved on to better technology and a more complex video sequence. In addition to regular videos, in 2013 the first animated video for the song "Ermak" was created, for which Igor Rasteryaev himself prepared the sketches of the drawings, and the animation was performed by Sergey Kotov. In 2015, the next cartoon clip for "Songs about Childhood" was released.

  Concert activities are also going well. Rasteryaev does not pursue the number of concerts, he usually gives only one to three per month. But the geography of trips is wide - the artist has traveled almost all of Russia, including Far North, visited Ukraine, Belarus, Poland (Bialystok). The audience invariably takes Igor well. The reason for this is not only the sincerity of his songs and the growing mastery of the performer. Rasteryaev, inevitably adhering to some general scheme, never leads concerts according to the same template. He varies the repertoire, including cover versions of the groups "King and the Shut", "Gas Sector", "Disco Crash", "Leningrad", "DDT", "Chizh", etc., old Cossack songs, songs of the war years - “Roads”, “We haven’t been at home for a long time”, intersperses singing with conversational inserts - talks about the history of creation and the meaning of certain songs, gives funny stories from his life and concert activity, sometimes invites village friends who inspired him to work on stage . Therefore, each concert turns into a creative evening, where there is a strong unity between the artist and the public.

  Work in the theater

  The concert activity of Igor Rasteryaev was initially built in such a way as to minimally interfere with his long-term work in the St. Petersburg State Musical Drama Theater "Buff". Therefore, he continued to perform in various performances and in recent years has been busy in the following roles:

  • Gregoire (Adventurer);
  • Bailiff (Casanova in Russia);
  • Konstantin (Passion at the Fountain);
  • Tishka (Wedding Krechinsky);
  • Emelyan Chernozemny (Square circle);
  • Waiter (The circus left, the clowns stayed);
  • Bochar (Magnificent Cuckold);
  • Corporal Zakhar Kosykh (Zhenya, Zhenechka and Katyusha);
  • Butch (Divas);
  • Eight Brothers (All the same Forest);
  • and etc.

  In November 2015, after 12 years of work, Igor Rasteryaev left the theater troupe

  Igor Rasteryaev became famous thanks to the video that blew up the Internet in 2010 for the author's song "Combiners". Fans immediately assigned Igor the title of "Singer from the people." The artist's work made him the prototype of a Russian person, as Rasteryaev himself says, all his songs are about people and for people.

  Childhood and family of Igor Rasteryaev

  Igor Rasteryaev was born in the artist's family. The artist's mother is a native of the city of St. Petersburg. The father comes from the village of Rakovka, Volgograd region, he is a hereditary Don Cossack, according to Igor.

  It was in the homeland of his father that the childhood of the future artist passed. In Rakovka, he made friends who, like Igor, came to the village for vacations with their relatives. And one of his friends, Alexei Lyakhov, played an important role in the development of Rasteryaev as a performer of songs: he became his producer and concert director.

  Igor Rasteryaev - Song about childhood

  In Rakovka, the folk singer learned to play the guitar, began to write author's songs, and later mastered the harmonica. As Igor himself says, that he has two Homelands - these are St. Petersburg and Rakovka, he is molded from two parts of the opposite worlds of the city and the rural hinterland.

  Study of Igor Rasteryaev

  Igor Rasteryaev began his education at an ordinary St. Petersburg school No. 189, and finished at school No. 558. From childhood, the future singer from the people dreamed of becoming Peter Pan, a bell ringer or catching pickpockets.

  
  

  A little later, the future artist wanted to become a journalist. But having matured, Igor did not choose any of the directions and entered the St. Petersburg State Academy Theater Arts, which he graduated in 2003 with honors.

  And despite successful career musician and performer of songs, the artist does not have a musical education.

  Career of Igor Rasteryaev

  After graduating from the institute, Igor Rasteryaev went to work at the St. Petersburg theater "Buff". Within its walls, the artist played many roles, both dramatic and comedic. As the actor himself says, most often he played alcoholics.

  
  

  Igor Rasteryaev did not bypass the domestic cinema either, he managed to star in several famous paintings: “Secrets of the investigation-6”, “The dog is missing” and “June 22. Fatal Decisions" along with famous artists, including Anna Kovalchuk, Ville Haapasalo and Alexander Lykov.

  Igor Rasteryaev himself claims that he never wanted to be a "star", but fate decreed otherwise. real popularity folk singer brought his author's song about combine operators. A childhood friend, Alexey Lyakhov, recorded a video of the performance of the future hit on mobile phone and posted it on YouTube, in three months the video gained more than a million views and entered the top ten most popular videos on RuTube.

  Igor Rasteryaev - Combiners

  Igor is sure that the video for the song "Combineers" bribed the audience with its sincerity and simplicity, because the shooting location is a simple kitchen with an ordinary atmosphere.

  In 2012, the artist became one of the contenders for participation in Eurovision from Russia, but to the great regret of his fans, Igor Rasteryaev refused this offer.

  Discography of Igor Rasteryaev

  The popularity of Igor Rasteryaev's songs, in his words, is due to the fact that he sings about ordinary people. He wanted to "unwind" famous producers, but Igor chose to remain who he really is, a real Russian soul with his music and poetry.

  Igor Rasteryaev - Russian road

  Until 2015, the artist released four albums: Russian Road (2011), Zvonar (2012), Songs of Uncle Vasya Mokhov (2013), Rozhok (2014)

  Personal life of Igor Rasteryaev

  Igor Rasteryaev is one of the most enigmatic artists of our time. Nothing is known about his personal life and family.

  
  

  Moreover, every journalist in an interview asks questions about girls, to which Igor laughs it off and replies that sometimes he has time for Serious relationships and then tries to change the subject. Apparently, with this tactic, the artist is trying to separate work and family.

  Igor Rasteryaev today

  In 2015, Igor Rasteryaev celebrated the fifth anniversary of his career on stage. After the arrival of popularity, the singer from the people traveled all over Russia, visited Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. But, as Igor himself says, he does not hold more than three concerts a month and still participates in the productions of the St. Petersburg theater "Buff".

  
  

  Igor is loved not only for his unstoppable drive at his concerts, but also for performing cover versions of hits famous performers: "Leningrad", "King and Jester", "Gas Sector", "Disco Crash", "DDT" and others. Rasteryaev also does not lose the opportunity to communicate with his fans using notes from the audience.

  It is known that Igor became the Laureate All-Russian competition entertainers in 2006.

  During his popularity, the performer had something to tell the admirers of his work, and he wrote the book “Volgograd Faces” for them. Its presentation took place in December 2012. The book is completely unique in its kind, Igor included stories about his small homeland Rakovka, about Volgograd nature, about village friends, stories from life the author supplemented with drawings in the “Rasteryaev style” with a simple helium pen, thus making the book very soulful.

  
  

  Igor Rasteryaev has already established himself as a singer from the people. Such artists should be on the stage, it is they who introduce us to the life of strangers and make us closer friend to friend. Rasteryaev does not look like fashionable and stereotyped performers, it is very pleasing that throughout creative way he remained true to his style.