Yanka Dyagileva

Yanka Dyagileva was a Russian poet and singer-songwriter and one of the most popular figures of her time in Russia's underground punk scene. She both played solo and performed with others, including Yegor Letov and bands Grazhdanskaya Oborona and Velikiye Oktyabri. Dyagileva was greatly influenced by Letov and Alexander Bashlachev, who were her friends. Her songs explored themes of desperation and depression, punk-style nihilism, and folk-like lamentations. Her death in 1991 has been considered as a symbolic end to the Siberian punk scene. She was born on 4 September 1966, in Novosibirsk, USSR to Stanislav Dyagilev and Galina Dyagileva, both engineers. She was of Russian, Ukrainian and Czech origin. In 1973 she attended public school and studied piano for a year at a music school before quitting. This sparked her interest in the guitar. While still in school Yanka started writing poems and performing, singing and playing guitar in school talent shows. In 1984 she entered the Novosibirsk Institute of Water Transport Engineers, but dropped out in her sophomore year. During this period she performed with the political band AMIGO. The earliest of Dyagileva's poetry that has survived is from 1985. In December 1985 she traveled to Leningrad, where she may have met Alexander Bashlachev. In October 1986, Dyagileva's mother died of cancer. In April 1987, Yanka met Egor Letov and joined his band Grazhdanskaya Oborona. From 1988 to 1990, Dyagileva toured and performed with the band. She recorded her first album Not Allowed in January 1988. Her first performance before a large audience took place on 24 June 1988, at a punk festival in Tyumen, recorded in the bootleg album To the Drop-Outs. In 1989, Dyagileva performed in Leningrad for the first time as part of a concert produced by Sergei Firsov, who became Dyagileva and Gr.Ob.'s first producer. Dyagileva's album Sold! was recorded in Firsov's apartment. Dyagileva's final known public appearances took place in November 1990 in Irkutsk, Angarsk, and Leningrad. Her final live concert recording took place in Irkutsk on 10 November 1990. Several more performances were planned for February 1991 in Irkutsk; it is unknown if they ever took place. At the end of February 1991, Dyagileva recorded her last songs in a Novosibirsk Electro-Technical Institute dormitory: "Legs [Feet] Above the Ground", "Five-Kopeck Coin in the Road", "About Little Devils", and "Water Will Come". Her body was found in the Inya River on 17 May 1991. The exact circumstances of her death remain unclear, but it is widely believed that she committed suicide by drowning. She was buried in Zaeltsovskoye Cemetery in Novosibirsk.