Of Historic Russian Faith and Art

A few days ago I wandered around an antique store and found myself staring at a beautiful hand painted Russian Orthodox icon. It was hundreds of years old and going for around $1200. For anyone ill-aquainted with the Orthodox tradition, icons are basically pictures of Saints that observers of the faith will respect, honor, and pray with. This is an example of the sort I was admiring. Enjoy the craftsmanship! For more information visit the link below. RUSSIAN AND GREEK ORTHODOX ICONS

Anthology of Russian Vocal Performance

Here are a couple of classical albums that have earlier works performed in the Russian language.  These albums are formatted to work with your Spotify account.  If you do not have Spotify, I highly recommend that software since it's free, legal, and full of resources.  You are required to have a Facebook account to use this software.

A General Overview of Tale of Bygone Years

According to Henryk Paszkiewicz's book The Origin of Russia, The Tale of Bygone Years was composed by the monk Nestor of the Crypt Monastery in Kiev.  It was written during the the early 12th century.  The chronicle covers the history of Kievan Rus, which lasted from the 10th to the 13th centuries (Paszkiewicz).  You can read these documents below for more information:

Click here for the Samuel Cross translation.

Click here for the Wikipedia article.

Click here for the NWE article.

Author information can be found in the blog's bibliography.

A brief look at video gaming in Russia

This is a brief overview of video gaming in Russia.  I came upon this by chance and thought it was worth sharing.  If you're new to learning Russian or don't care about the Russian, click on the video and find the close captions button or "CC."  You can activate English subtitles by clicking on "CC."

I see music genres as a scientist may see classification.  I see it as a way to classify music and a method to understand it.  It's very difficult to define a genre (like a species) because there are many variables to consider when classifying a song.  How is a genre separated from other genres?  When do you add a prefix to a genre?  Are some genres equal?  It's easy to say that art genres are nothing like species of animals because art is man-made and therefore has a political, cultural, and personal qualities that can not be observed objectively as if a science because humans are political, cultural, and personal with each other.  And so since art is not something like a foreign object (a dog for example), a rock, or a math problem, it's harder to develop some definite science.