Gutarka / “гутарка” is the Belarusian word for "conversation" or "chat". Under this heading you will find engaging interviews that we conduct with artists and cultural figures to give you very personal insights into the world of Belarusian music, art, and culture!

Vladimir Pougach (VP): Well, it’s not something in the past - it’s still ongoing. In a couple of weeks we’ll have the next performance; it’s a current project. At first the Kupalaŭcy guys contacted me with the idea that I could write a song for them. And then they invited me to play as the third actor, and now I’m one of the three: Siarhei Chub, Aleh Harbuz, and me. We’ve already performed in Berlin, in Prague, in Zurich. We’ve also played about 15 shows in Poland.

There’s really no difference. It isn’t some business project with hard goals, reports, or an algorithm. It’s the same - you just write songs. The only difference is that when you write for a play, you’re given certain boundaries. You know what you’re writing for; you don’t invent the topic yourself - the author of the play tells you what it’s about. That’s the only difference.

KuB: You have one track in the Polesian language/dialect, and in general you’re interested in this topic. How would you explain to our German reader, or to someone completely unfamiliar with Polesie or Belarus, what it is - and what Polesie and being a Poleshuk mean to you? (Poleshuk = resident of Polesie)

VP: I think it’s not too difficult to explain to Germans, given that someone from Hamburg doesn’t fully understand someone from Munich (laughs). Or let’s look at Plattdeutsch (low German) - I think the Polesie dialect is kind of like Plattdeutsch. How else can you explain it? It’s cultural diversity - something that, by the way, Germany had quite a lot of, as a country that was built relatively recently. And Belarus has such a region - Polesie, specifically Southwestern Polesie, where I’m from. It’s a special place at the crossroads of cultures: Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and even a bit of Russian, though the Russian came only with the Soviet Union.

VP: It’s the language my grandmother spoke; it’s the language I heard as a child. Because growing up in Pinsk I heard the literary Belarusian that we’re speaking right now only on the radio or TV. In the villages people spoke this Polesian. And it differs quite a lot - it's a kind of mix, similar to what Ukrainians call “surzhyk”. And it [Polesian] still exists, and I have a lot of material from ethnographic expeditions in our district - including audio recordings of village choirs. I have all that; I just chose this particular song to arrange because I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. Actually, I have enough material for a whole album.

KuB: That’s cool, will we ever get to hear something like that?

VP:  I really hope so, because right now I just have different priorities in the near future. But the material exists, the desire exists, and I hope it will work out.

KuB: Another language question: in the year 2005 you released one of your signature songs “Mojo solntse” in Russian, 2007 you released the same song in Belarusian: “Majo sonca”- in your understanding, what’s the language of this song?

KuB: That’s exactly what I’m asking - how you imagine this song for yourself?