"What kind of word is 'Koryazhma'?"

"What kind of word is 'Koryazhma'?" Blues Conquers a Small Town in Arkhangelsk Oblast

In Arkhangelsk Oblast there is a small town called Koryazhma, and in its center stands a café called "Pannorаma" (spelled with two n's, just like that). On the café's walls hang posters: Chris Cain, Shana Waterstone, Cory Harris. And here's the thing—these posters aren't there for decoration. All these artists, whose names would do credit to a well-established European club's box office, have actually performed in Koryazhma.

Anton Duryagin, the café owner who for the past nine years has been bringing Russian and foreign blues musicians to town, on how Koryazhma became one of the centers of attraction for blues musicians.

The first Black artist we had was Tom Atta from Great Britain. When I put up the posters, people's reaction was like: wow, someone from Great Britain can actually come to our little cafe in Koryazhma. Not to the cultural center, but to a cafe. Like, Duryagin's really showing off.

Anton Duryagin didn't take to blues right away — in his youth he listened to Russian rock classics, then played Romantic Collection CDs in his car, mostly drawn to slow "blues-tinged" pieces. But Anton's wife Irina genuinely loves imported music, and when they decided to open a café, the couple immediately planned the space to accommodate live musicians, and they themselves started going to festivals.

The first person I was introduced to, by chance—or maybe it wasn't chance, the stars just aligned that way—was Tim Dorofeev. He performed with us periodically. They'd come with their original material and with some classical pieces, and it was interesting. I realized people liked it. There's a layer of people in our city who aren't just interested in the fifth lineup of Vorovayki that gets hauled to our cultural center. They want higher quality music.

Then they invited Viktor Kolesov from Vologda, the organizer of the "Blues on the Veranda" festival.

And I was introduced to Yevgeny Kolbasheev, we became friends, and at some point I started talking to him about how great it would be for us to bring someone over, specifically foreign artists. And that's how it began. Irina and I would later reminisce about which countries our artists came from: Australia, Italy, the USA, Argentina, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belarus. We even had a guy from Japan.

And at the same time, I started getting to know the musicians who accompanied foreigners — Yura Novgorodsky, Vasya Motyltsov. It's a shame that there aren't many such people in Russia, maybe a hundred, and it turned out that whoever came once would come a second and third time too.

The newly opened source of music unfamiliar to the northern backwoods attracted not just locals—now people come to concerts from Kotlas and other surrounding settlements.

Roughly speaking, Voronov showed up. People were asking: what, how come, is that really him? The guy who knows Keith Richards and Keith gave him a guitar. How did you manage to bring him to our Koryazhma? We don't get people like that even at City Day.

Or take when Jay C Smith came—I once put up a poster with a photo of him standing with Mick Jagger. People went absolutely crazy over that too. Now when I put on a show, people don't ask who it is or what it's about anymore—they trust that it'll be good.

Our audience is a bit heavy-handed, I've been to other cities where things are looser somehow. We're northern people, our emotions don't come out as openly, there's that kind of specificity to our city.

Foreign musicians not only come to Panorama with pleasure, but also periodically return, sometimes on a private basis.

There was an interesting story with Gregg Coffey Brown. He came to us with Tim Dorofeyev's band, and then they went on to a festival in Arkhangelsk. So I pick him up from Kotlas and I'm driving him. We're entering Koryazhma, and we've got these wooden houses standing at the beginning of the street, and he's sitting there muttering something in English. I ask him, Grisha (that's what I called him), what's up? And they translate for me: he says he grew up in Alaska, and he's looking at our snowdrifts and remembering his childhood—it looks a lot like Alaska. And so he plays this concert, we go out onto the porch, we're sitting there smoking, snow outside, quiet, it's already past midnight, and he stands there and says "I'll be back."

And then Corey Harris came to play a concert for me, and after the show we're sitting around talking, and suddenly Grisha walks in—I mean Gregg. I was blown away, I say, hey Gregg. It had been about six months since his last visit. And he says, "I told you I'd come back."

He met a girl in Koryazhma and came to visit her. And he ended up at a Corey Harris concert. So it turned out that two musicians met and got to know each other—one from Britain, the other from the USA—in a café in Koryazhma. What a paradox.

The specificity of Koryazhma's geographical location is, in this case, a separate point of interest for artists.

There were times when I had to urgently pick up guys from Arkhangelsk and bring them to me, or drive them from me to Arkhangelsk. The train goes at an inconvenient time and takes forever, so I've driven musicians there more than once—that's 650 kilometers. And that's what really blows foreigners' minds the most.

So there was this time I drove with Luca Giordano, just the two of us. And my English... well, I know hello, goodbye, and thank you. And he's Italian, and the only Russian he knows is "spasibo." So we're driving for nine hours having this conversation. And I got the impression that I understood quite a lot of what was being said. We'd been driving for about three hours, a third of the way there, and he asks how much longer. I tell him, and he says: "I live in Italy, fifteen minutes by car and I'm swimming in the sea, and fifteen minutes in the other direction and I'm skiing down mountains." But here it's like this: half a day of driving and you're still in the same region. That's what blows Europeans away. Americans take it more in stride—they've got big distances too, after all.

Well, and what would it be without that notorious local flavor?

Or I'd run into Dutch people who drove from the airport in Syktyvkar. And when you're driving out of Syktyvkar, you're basically driving straight through the taiga, so to speak. Trees and pines all around, that's it. And they were absolutely blown away too.

We made a technical stop, and we hear—wolves howling in the forest. Well, wolves are wolves, they howl and they howl, they didn't come after us. But the foreigners got their business sorted out very quickly. Wow! Wolves! And they're already sitting in the car. We drive on, and I'm cracking jokes the whole way—Russia, bears, all that sort of thing.

And our mayor, Andrey, was at the concert that evening. And suddenly he gets a call and just rushes off somewhere urgently from the concert. It's nine o'clock at night. Where did he run off to? He comes back about twenty minutes later.

So we have this outlying area here, a neighborhood called Peschanka, private houses, and a bear wandered in—a bear cub, actually—but still, the game wardens came out. I mean, it's not great when a bear is walking around the city. They drove the bear out. And then later I'm sitting with some musicians, telling them this story. I say to them: "I thought I was joking."

Anton Duryagin has no plans to stop with his "imports," and here's what he says about the commercial side of things:

So we have Carlos Johnson playing next Monday. All the seats are sold out, 60 tickets, and people are still asking to come, but where am I supposed to put them.

When Zhenya Kolbasheev posted these tours online, people were surprised, like, Zhenya, where's that? Between normal cities? What's that weird word, "Koryazhma"? Where are you sending people? And then he'd post the next tour for the next artist, and there's Koryazhma again.

But the main thing here is different—this isn't a story about making money. We're already at that age, even if we like to think we're still young and spry. So I need to do something for myself at least a few times a year. And that's why we bring in artists, Russian and foreign, and throw ourselves a festival like this every two or three months. I do it for myself and my wife.

And people come? That's amazing! I don't even do any advertising—I just post the flyer and I know that half the hall is already gathered at that moment. A core group of people has formed for whom this is important too, valuable too, a celebration too.

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