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Draft:Phantom (Soviet song)

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"Фантом"
Song by
«Chizh & Co»
«Kommunizm (band)»
«Radio Tapok»
«Vishneviy Sad»
from the album
«Erogenous Zone» («Chizh & Co»)
«Let It Be» («Kommunizm (band)»)
«Phantom» («Vishneviy Sad»)
«Phantom» («Radio Tapok»)
LanguageRussian language
English titlePhantom
GenreAlternative rock

"Phantom" (rus. "Фантом") is a Soviet military song dating back to the Vietnam War, the original author being unknown. It was based on rumors about the participation of Soviet pilots in the armed conflict.

Historical analysis of the song

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The most comprehensive study of the song's history has been compiled by journalist, scholar and philologist Rustam Fakhretdinov, known for his scholarly works on contemporary folk songwriting and the "A-Pesni" website dedicated to his collections. Fakhretdinov points out the song's clear belonging to modern folk art, as none of the authors and performers has claimed authorship of the verses, but at the same time there are at least five variants of the same song.[1] According to the philologist, the song was created in some variant no later than the 1970s; he believes that the motif of the song “Gop so smikom” (rus. "Гоп со смыком", eng. "Gop with a bow"), created in the 1920s, was originally used. The song is best known for Chizh & Co's version precisely because of the author's reworking of the original motif.[2][3]

The song appeared and gained its first popularity after the beginning of the Vietnam War.

The song got its second life thanks to Soviet and Russian rock singers: the song was included in the album “Let It Be” of Yegor Letov's project “Kommunism” (1989), and then recorded on the album “Phantom” (1993) by the band “Vishneviy Sad” (rus. "Вишневый Сад", eng. "Cherry Orchard"). The most famous version is attributed to the band Chizh & Co (rus. "Чиж & Co", eng. "Chizh & Company"), who recorded the song for the album “Erogenous Zone” (1996).

Lyrics and interpretation

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In the most common version of said Soviet song, performed by the band Chizh & Co, the lyrics of the song tell the story of a U.S. Air Force pilot of an F-4 Phantom II fighter-bomber.[4]

As follows from the lyrics, the pilot during the Vietnam War makes a combat sortie from the territory of Thailand against targets in North Vietnam: “My way is far and ain't ease / My F4 keeps rushing to the East”, the presence of enemy planes being clear.[5] The pilot attempts to perform his aerial task, by launching missiles on an unknown target, but to no avail: the "Phantom" is hit by a missile, and the pilot ejects and is captured immediately after landing.

When interrogated, the pilot asks who shot him down and is told by a Viet Cong soldier: “You were shot down by our pilot, Lee Si Tsin.” The American protagonist of the song parries to that by recalling that on the radio he heard a conversation between Russian pilots: “ 'Kolya, go! And I will strike 'em!' / 'Vanya, hit 'em! I will cover!' ", from which he concludes "... (the) Russian ace Ivan shot down my plane".[5]

“Li Xi Qing” is a kind of transliteration of the Russian surname Lisitsyn in an East Asian (in Russian representation) manner.[6] From the songs we only know that in the skies over Vietnam an American pilot is shot down by a certain ace MiG-17 pilot, about whom the Vietnamese say to the downed American: “You were shot down by our pilot, Lee Si Tsin.”[7], however, Li Xi Qing speaks in Russian. The name "Li Xi Qing" is not Vietnamese, but actually Chinese (chinese trad. 李西青, eng. Li Xi Qing), and is usually used in anecdotes to denote a collective image of Soviet pilots during the Korean War. It should be noted that during the Japanese-Chinese war, Soviet volunteer pilots called themselves "Wang Yu Shing".[8]

It should be noted however that the fact of the real participation of the Soviet Air Force in the Korean War is mixed with a widespread (and to this day highly controversial) rumor about the participation of Soviet pilots in air battles in Vietnam.[9][10][11][12]

There exist various versions and reworkings of the song. For instance, in “Middle Eastern” (rus. "Ближневосточный"), in which the action takes place during a fictional conflict involving Israel and Iraq), may have appeared no earlier than the late 1970s as the IAI Kfir fighter-bomber is mentioned. Another song, “German”, describes on behalf of a German pilot a battle on Germany's Western Front during World War I, and stylized according to the rules of Russian pre-revolutionary orthography, which appeared in 2015.[13]

Mention of the song in other works

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  1. The song is mentioned independently in another song by Chizh & Co. In the song “Animal” (part of the album “Nothing to Lose”) there are the words “I would breathe grass, I would play with my tail, wild and alien to everyone, I would not sing ‘Phantom’ ”.[14]
  2. The song performed by the band Chizh & Co is heard in the documentary series “Born in the USSR” in the series “21 Up”.
  3. The song is mentioned in a joint song by Branimir, 25/17 and Chizh - “In Our Small Town”: “And I want to get drunk and sing 'Phantom' with my friends on the guitar”.[15]
  4. The song is mentioned at the beginning of Victor Pelevin's novel Omon Ra (1992):[16]

    ...just at the very beginning of summer I heard an idiotic song from someone, which had the words: “My Phantom, like a bullet fast, in the sky blue and clear, with a roar gaining altitude”. I must say that its idiocy, which I recognized quite clearly, did not prevent me from being moved to the core by it. What other words do I remember? “I see a smoky line in the sky... Somewhere in the distance is my native Texas.” And there was a father, and a mother, and some Mary, very real because her last name was mentioned in the text.

    — Victor Pelevin, Omon Ra, Page 15

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Fakhretdinov, Rustam. ""Фантом"" [«Phantom»]. a-pesni.org (in Russian). Archived from the original on 20 October 2017. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  2. ^ Fakhretdinov, Rustam. "Диссертация Фахрединова" [Fakhretdinov's Dissertation] (PDF). a-pesni.org (in Russian). Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 August 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  3. ^ Fakhretdinov, Rustam. "Исследование Фахрединова" [Fakhretdinov's Investigation] (PDF). anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru (in Russian). Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  4. ^ Швед, Слава. ""Фантом"". Wayback Machine. Archived from the original on 20 September 2018.
  5. ^ a b Palstsianau, Mikhail (April 28, 2019). "Chizh & Co "Phantom" English Translation". Lyricstranslate.com.
  6. ^ Hramchihin, Aleksandr Anatolyevich (22 May 2008). "Вторая индокитайская". rulife.ru. Русская жизнь. Archived from the original on 1 January 2011.
  7. ^ Uspenskiy, Fyodor Borisovich (2007). "Именослов. Историческая семантика имени" [Namesake. Historical semantics of the name]. Индрик (in Russian). 2: 394, 396. ISBN 978-5-85759-404-9.
  8. ^ Korolkov, Yuri (1970). Кио ку мицу!: Совершенно секретно--при опасности сжечь. Роман-хроника [Kio ku mitsu!: Top Secret-- Burn in case of danger. A novel-chronicle] (in Russian). Moscow: Sovetsky Pisatel.
  9. ^ "Task Force Russia – Report 17 March–16 April 1993 18th Report". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019.
  10. ^ Xiaoming, Zhang (2004). Red Wings Over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 1-58544-340-9.
  11. ^ Clashes, Marshal L.; III, Michel (1997). Air Combat Over North Vietnam 1965–1972. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-519-6.
  12. ^ Brune, Lester H. (1996). The Korean War: Handbook of the literature and research (1996 ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-28969-7.
  13. ^ Дореволюціонный Совѣтчикъ (3 July 2015). "Воздушныя баталіи Первой Міровой" [First World War Air Battles]. Facebook (in Russian).
  14. ^ "Дискография "Чиж & Co"" [Chizh & Co's Discography]. schizh.ru (Chizh & Co's official website as of 2018) (in Russian).
  15. ^ "В нашем маленьком городе" [In Our Small Town]. YouTube (in Russian). Archived from the original on 15 August 2023.
  16. ^ Pelevin, Victor (1992). Омон Ра [Omon Ra] (in Russian). Moscow: Text Publishers. p. 15.
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