Our Youtube Choice of the Video of the Week for the Second Week of Dec.2016 - is Yana Gray's Gypsy/Russian Ballad Uploaded on Dec.04-2016 - Based on Serge Yesenin Poem.

       For the second week of Dec. 2016 - we picked a Russian/Gypsy ballad uploaded by Yana Gray - an American/Russian vocalist specializing in old Russian/Gypsy ballads - on Dec. 04-2016. Yana Gray's low, sensuous alto lends itself well towards Russian/Gypsy ballads. Some ladies performers of this popular musical genre have a mezzo soprano voice which also sound good. The operatic soprano - is not the best voice for this kind of genre - even though a lot of prominent performers - specializing in it - have that range.
      The piece of poetry by Serge Yesenin - was used as lyrics - for Yana Gray ballad we are highlighting. Yesenin was a celebrated young Russian poet from 1920's, and he used a lot of nature's and animals' - motives in it. He - himself was an enormously handsome youth who successfully romanced and married a famous American modern dancer - a big celebrity of the day - Isadora Duncan - a small digression about Yesenin's and Duncan's short-lived marriage will follow:

      Her visit to Soviet Union made her fall deeply in love not only with a great looking Serge Yesenin - fifteen years her junior - a "newbie" to the - at times - treacherous - celebrity world - but Duncan also fell deeply under a spell of a newly born - Socialistic/Leftist/Communist - "paradise" - the Soviet Union - which was - for the next 50 years - despotically run - by a long time lasting, ruthless power machine of the bloody Soviet dictator - Josheph Stalin. 

      The historians estimate that his string of horrible labor camps - killed no less than 10 million - mostly innocent - Soviet people as well as many foreigners - "in love with Communism".
     Back to Yesenin and Isadora Duncan - upon her marriage to Yesenin and their return to the U.S. - the American public opinion "poured venom" on Isadora for her sympathetic views towards the excesses of global Socialism/Communism - while the American press quickly "sharpened their collective claws" to attack a pair of odd, new members of the celebrity circles - their all-time favorite targets.
     The marriage broke up - before shortly after it began - and while Isadora - subsequently - suffered a tragedy in terms of her two young children from her previous marriage - drowning in an accident - she recovered from the tragedy and lived her long and productive life - while the Yesenin's fate was tragic. 

     Yesenin - in the meantime - went back to Russia and wrote a lot of scathing reviews of the U.S. - which were - almost certainly - forced by Stalin's Red regime's - propaganda machine; however - taking into the account his rough treatment by the American press - perhaps - it was not overly hard for him to do. 

     Unfortunately - however - Yesenin committed suicide at the young age. There is a caveat to the statement - above - namely - the Stalin's iron fisted regime - "staged" a lot of "suicides by a famous person".

      Most of Stalin's "machine's" crimes - came out to the surface - following Stalin's sudden death of a light stroke - in 1953. According to many historians - he could have survives his stroke - if not for the fact - that he sentenced tons of physicians - a lot of them - the Jewish ones - to hard labor camps - shortly before his fatal "stroke episode".

       Have a great second week of December 2016 - everybody and as always - we meet here - a week from today - as every week!
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