On the breakwater at the surf beach of Brunswick Heads, Northern NSW, a large group of men are reverently singing a rousing Russian revolutionary song. They are dressed as Russian workers, in cloth caps.
There are emotional conviction and Russian passion in this song about solidarity. But in fact none of these comrades have ever been anywhere near the Motherland, seen a windswept steppe, traversed a frozen tundra, nor do any of them speak Russian (although they do like a vodka).
In his impressive fake Russian accent, master of ceremonies for the choir, Mark Swivel, explains: "Dustyesky is the leading genuine fake Russian choir in southern hemisphere.
"We are 28 men, middle-aged, very hairy, and we all live outside the tiny little hamlet of Mullumbimby or as we call it, Mullumgrad.
"And all of us singing like we know the language and the words."
Mullumbimby is a small, subtropical town near Byron Bay. A freewheeling place of yoga, marijuana, veggies and decidedly alternative ways of being.
Not an easy place then to summon the suffering in the songs of the battlefields, the despair of the proletarian worker. But Mark says the songs "pick you up, they make you sing them, they sweep you away".
A choirmaster and vodka headache
It all began as a bit of a sing and a few beers at the RSL on Tuesday nights.
"They had to come up with these elaborate excuses to leave the house," local writer and comedian Mandy Nolan tells Australian Story.
"They all live in relationships where they have to co-parent and do half the cooking. You don't just go out to the pub with these dudes, you've got to have an excuse and a Russian choir, that’s it."
But then they accidentally went viral, were picked up by Russian television and are now known to millions of Russian people.
The idea came from "comrade" Glenn Wright, a former co-owner and talent booker for Sydney's Harbourside Brasserie, who moved to Byron Shire and started the Mullum Music Festival.
"I've had a longstanding love affair with the music of Russia, the great Russian composers and also the marching army songs," he says.
Glenn wanted a Russian choir for the festival but couldn’t afford to fly one out so hatched the idea of creating one locally.
It was 2:00am at a party when they were drinking vodka that Glenn ran into Andrew Swain, an actual choirmaster. "That was when he asked me, well, I was pretty much anybody's at that stage," Andrew says.
Singing ability was not a high priority when Andrew put the call out.
"I didn't audition anybody, I do believe that everybody can sing," he says.
It was about looking the part. "We looked for hairy people, so hairy men, woolly men, men that you could find at the bar late at night."
Mark points out that singing ability is subjective.
"I have heard some people say that Dustyesky has three type of men: one with excellent voice, two, kind of hold a tune, and three, good to have a drink with. We sing perfect four-part harmony, even though some of us cannot sing."
Getting carried away by the music is the point, Andrew says. "When I'm teaching an amazing song to a bunch of people who aren't accomplished singers and we're also drinking beer, usually at the same time, you know, pretty much anything can happen."
Although "comrade" Swivel likes to say all the choir members live in shipping containers, work in a typewriter factory, are salmon smokers and make gherkin liqueur, he is in fact a lawyer.
"They're from all walks of life," Andrew says of the men. "They're nut farmers, teachers, plumbers, carpenters, musicians and builders."
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Dustyesky hits the big timeski
From their inaugural gig at the Bangalow Hotel in Byron Shire, competing, Mark says, with "greyhounds on television, people playing on the poker machines, and the men in hi-vis vests drinking Tooheys New" they knew something special was happening.
"Everybody dancing and behaving in quite a silly fashion," he says in his trademark faux Russian accent.
Perhaps it was the toasts with Russian vodka to make the performance more culturally appropriate, maybe it was Mark announcing that, "now we look forward to meeting your womens and livestocks", after the performance, but suddenly they were in demand at festivals at a time when they only had three songs.
Over time the stages got bigger, they sang at festivals in Melbourne and Sydney and for thousands at Adelaide's Womadelaide Festival.
"You could always spot the Russians in the audience because they were the ones crying or singing along to every verse," Andrew says.
The Russian ambassador and his entourage came to see them, looking, Mark says, like a Bond villain.
The Russian impostors were "terrified", Andrew says, when the real Russians started noticing them and their journalists came to interview them.
"We were really nervous about whether they would like us or hate us," he says.
Then "out of the blue" the Russia-1 TV network picked up a clip they had made and played it at the end of every news bulletin.
It was possibly the only time the word Mullumbimby has been spoken by a Russian broadcaster.
"Suddenly my phone started getting messages from Russia in the middle of the night," Andrew says. They were a hit. Big timeski.
A love letter from Russia
Then came the call from the Russian Ministry of Culture inviting them to sing in Red Square for the Immortal Regiment at the Grand Victory Day Parade on May 9. The full Russian display, "250,000 people and [President Vladimir] Putin and the tanks and all the stuff," Andrew says incredulously.
The Russian Government were flying 28 men half-way round the world to sing for four minutes. "Most of men not last that long," jokes Mark as his Russian alter ego. "We give it a crack anyway."
However, the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the event and Dustyesky's big trip to the Motherland.
Instead, Russian television reporters helped the choir to put a clip together. Filmed on their iPhones in isolation, the group of Aussie men recorded a beautiful yet tragic song about tanks on the battlefield, and a soldier who will not make it home to his family.
Russia Today TV network edited the clip and broadcast it during the Victory Day telecast.
The men of Dustyesky were amazed.
"Millions of people have watched it and I've been getting hundreds and hundreds of comments from Russian people saying, 'you guys are amazing, this is incredible'," Andrew says.
"It turns out that Russian people are really generous and are quite forgiving about pretty crappy accents."
Mark isn't letting the COVID-19 restrictions stop the choir singing.
"We are choir born for pandemics, most infectious choir on the planet right now," he says.
As Dustyesky's popularity surged, a Russian choir sent back a love letter. The Choir of Udmurtia in the Volga responded with a rendition of Waltzing Matilda. The respect worked both ways.
Mark has also extended an invitation to the Kremlin to come share a brew or two and sing a few songs.
"We invite President Putin to come to Mullumgrad to hang out in the river together. We take off our shirts and cover ourselves in macadamia butter and see what happens," he says.
It has taken a motley choir from Mullumbimby to return ancient folk songs and classic songs that were not often sung anymore to Russian culture. And still have a drink and a laugh.
Dustyesky is proof you can have Russian soul if you really want to. "The songs of Russia are actually the songs of entire world," Mark says.
"That is the lesson, if you want one, of Dustyesky. That there is no particular culture, there is just the song and it holds all of us within it."
Watch Dustyesky on Australian Story, 8:00pm (AEST), ABCTV and iview.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA1LTI1L2F1c3RyYWxpYW4tZmFrZS1ydXNzaWFuLWNob2lyLWR1c3R5ZXNreS1nb2VzLXZpcmFsLW11bGx1bWJpbWJ5LzEyMjcwNjcw0gEnaHR0cHM6Ly9hbXAuYWJjLm5ldC5hdS9hcnRpY2xlLzEyMjcwNjcw?oc=5
2020-05-24 19:53:09Z
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