Tatyana Bulanova

Tatyana Bulanova / Татьяна Буланова

Published: June 20, 2016

Tatyana Bulanova (Татьяна Буланова) is a Russian singer from St. Petersburg. Growing up, Bulanova studied the piano in music school, and also began to play the guitar in her teens. For college, she originally enrolled in the library sciences department of the Leningrad Institute of Culture, but she soon moved to the vocal music department.

She started her musical career with the group Summer Garden (Летний Сад), which was quite popular in Russia in the early 1990s. She wrote a number of songs for the group and toured with them widely. The group sold the most tapes of any band in 1994, more than 200,000. Bulanova then began a solo career in 1996. Her first album, which appeared in the same year, was called My Russian Heart (Моё русское сердце). One of the songs from the album, “My Bright Light” (“Ясный мой свет”), won a Golden Gramophone, among other awards. The album was a departure for Bulanova and a change of image: Summer Garden had focused on dance tunes, but Bulanova’s solo career involved more lyrical, sadder melodies. Several of her albums, such as Birthday (День рождения) and Love (Любовь), consist almost entirely of such songs. But her later 1999 album, Flock, has more of a rock feel, as Bulanova wanted to stretch the limits of her creativity. She has continued to release albums and songs to this day, though she has not released a full-length album since 2010’s Romances (Романсы).

Bulanova has won many awards for her music and acting, and was named a Distinguished Artist of the Russian Federation in 2004. She has won Ovation awards—Russian pop music awards—twice, and was named “Woman of the Year” in 2011 by a Petersburg-based organization. She wrote her autobiography, A Woman’s Territory (Территория женщины), in 2007.

Bulanova has also displayed a spiritual side. She believes that her zodiac sign, Aries, is what has compelled her to sacrifice everything for her work. She also believes that when she was in a horrific car accident in 1996, an angel of mercy saved her—she has written that she had a strange compulsion to unbuckle her seatbelt right before the crash, but she didn’t, and that was what saved her.

Find Tatyana Bulanova on Amazon

 

“My Bright Light” (“Ясный мой свет”), one of Bulanova’s first popular songs:

Lyrics for “My Bright Light”:
Где ж ты, мой свет, бродишь голову склоня
Дай же ответ, что не позабыл меня.
Ведь писем нет вот уже четыре дня,
Милый, не греши, напиши.

Живу я без тебя словно во сне,
Горю я без тебя словно в огне,
Прошу я – напиши весточку мне,
Хоть строчечку ты напиши.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

Мне нелегко, только чья же в том вина,
Ты далеко, в целом мире я одна.
Лишь высоко в небе грустная луна,
Слышишь, вздох души напиши.

Живу я без тебя словно во сне,
Горю я без тебя словно в огне,
Прошу я – напиши весточку мне,
Хоть строчечку ты напиши.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Слезою дождя на мокром окне,
Ясный мой свет, ты напиши мне
Весенним лучом на белой стене.

 

“Don’t Let Me Go” (“Не отпускай меня”), one of her newer (2015) popular songs:

Lyrics for “Don’t Let Me Go”:
Стоя на пол пути, проще всего уйти.
Ты не смотри в глаза, дождь это не слеза.
Переживём тоску, боль может и пройдёт.
Но если я уйду, никто уже не вернёт.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Кто и в чём виноват?
Надо ли нам искать?
Просто смотреть в глаза.
Я не хочу терять.
Мне бы слова найти.
Только слова не те.
Стоя на пол пути, я снова хочу к тебе.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Ты не отпускай меня.
Просто скажи: “Постой!”
И нашу любовь, храня.
Я буду всегда, с тобой.

Find Tatyana Bulanova on Amazon

About the author

Julie Hersh

Julie studied Russian as a Second Language in Irkutsk and before that, Bishkek, with SRAS's Home and Abroad Scholarship program, with the goal of someday having some sort of Russia/Eurasia-related career. She recently got her master’s degree from the University of Glasgow and the University of Tartu, where she studied women’s dissent in Soviet Russia. She also has a bachelor’s degree in literature from Yale. Some of her favorite Russian authors are Sorokin, Shishkin, Il’f and Petrov, and Akhmatova. In her spare time Julie cautiously practices martial arts, reads feminist websites, and taste-tests instant coffee for her blog.

Program attended: Home and Abroad Scholar

View all posts by: Julie Hersh