Zmeyev :: minstrel.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that Zmeyev was from St. Petersburg, Russia when I looked up the origins of “minstrel.” (The lowercase and the punctuation are both intentional.) The spelling was a giveaway, arguably even a clichéd representation of Russian names, the sort of name you’d give an antagonist if you were making a cold war video game. There’s nothing antagonistic about his instrumentation though and no chill in the air either. In fact “after (interlude)” sounds exactly like a warm sunny day with a slight breeze blowing on you as you sit under an umbrella and sip on a tall glass of lemonade.

Now that song description is probably the least Russian thing I could say about Zmeyev. If we’re going back to tired cliché for a moment, you’d expect “hammer and sickle” music from a Russian producer. Lots of nationalistic pride. Lots of strident tones. You’d expect borscht and vodka right? Not here. “seaside vibez” may not have come from somebody who grew up in the Southern half of the United States, somewhere with free access to a public beachfront, but you’d never guess it listening.

“minstrel.” is really good at defying your expectations. Even the album’s title leads you in the wrong direction. A classical definition of the word would be a bard who sang for royalty. A less flattering definition would be white performers who mocked African-American ones by wearing facepaint and doing vulgar impressions for audiences who wanted to see black stereotypes grossly magnified. Now I’d like to imagine that Zmeyev is playfully hinting he’s a white Russian making music in a genre that is known for its black roots, but in truth I known nothing about Zmeyev’s ethnicity. Assuming there are no black people in Russia would be gross in and of itself.

What I do know is that I smile listening to tracks like “Jazzy Moves.” Whatever his background, whatever his motives, you can’t deny his love of black music whether it’s jazz, rap, R&B or blues. His music breathes in that love and breathes it out in his layered production. Some producers like to show off by obfuscating their samples, adding extra layers of static, changing the pitch or distorting the sound profiles with various effects. Zmeyev’s work is clean and I mean that it sounds exactly like what it is. That doesn’t make his style right and others wrong — it’s just a choice he made that works well.

It was a genuine pleasure to listen to and review “minstrel.” Sometimes I have to push myself hard just to come up with a few things to say in praise of or in rejection for an emcee, deejay or producer. With Zmeyev though I just sat and let the music play while the words spilled forth from my fingertips. It was as though I had cut the skin right at the fingernails and bled my digital ink all over the pages. It flowed freely but not painfully and quickly healed thanks to the gentle vibes of Zmeyev’s style. Let’s hope that his music is a strong reminder that Russia’s government is not to be confused with Russia’s people and that like any other nation it has many fine aspects when you get beyond politics.