Musical Tether: A Conversation with Sonya Belaya on ‘Dacha’

Music has a unique ability to convey emotions that transcend written or spoken language. Things lost in translation cannot be lost in sound. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Because of music’s cross-cultural power, it is easy to minimize a particular work’s origins. After all, if music is universal, is the original language of a set of lyrics truly important? Do the specific cultural cues inherent in a song really matter? This perspective, however, woefully ignores what makes a particular work speak to a broader audience. Music’s power indeed transcends geographic and social bounds, but only because it truly reflects the emotions and thoughts of its makers, and their joy, sorrow, love, fear, and anger are all things to which everyone can connect. Thus, the best way to tap into a sound that can reach everyone is to faithfully represent the culture from which it derives. Only then can the music convey the emotions at their core of a piece in a way that pervades geopolitical divisions. This is exactly what pianist-vocalist-composer Sonya Belaya does with Dacha (Ropeadope, 2025).

A six-song cycle, Dacha is undeniably tied to Belaya’s ancestral homeland of Russia. Soviet feminist poetry plays a prominent role throughout the work. Two pieces adopt the words of Anna Akhmatova, a writer who was twice – in 1965 and 1966 – nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for her meditations on  memory, time, and the horrors of living in Stalinist Russia. Belaya’s “Future Living” draws from Akhmatova’s ‘You’ll live happy, evil free,’ a poem from 1915 whose deceptively inspiring title speaks of the Red Revolution’s incineration of places of worship. Belaya turns Akhmatova’s calls for peace in a world of chaos into a hushed, wistful monologue that gradually builds into a furious march of angered cries reflecting the  realization that such tranquility is hardly at hand. And yet hope remains, with the piece quietly suggesting a glimmer of light sneaking through the smoke covering the desolate and ashen terrain. Belaya’s “Requiem” uses text from the preface and dedication of Akhmatova’s elegy of the same name. Written in secret between 1935 and 1961, the author’s “Requiem” reflected on the suffering of the Great Purge, where Stalinists killed somewhere between seven hundred thousand and one million people.  The sense of loss and mourning permeates throughout the track, with Ledah Finck’s violin solo completely ripping out your heart midway through the piece. Like with Akhmatova’s writings, Dacha explores other aspects of Russian literature and culture, with “Three Sisters” adapting Alexander Pushkin’s fairy tale “Tale of Tsar Tsaltan.” The opening piece, “In the Garden” reimagines a Russian marriage song, and “Remember, Keep To it” makes reference to the Soviet protest song, “Nightly Road.”

The Russian roots of Dacha are inescapable. But one should keep in mind that the album is also inherently somewhat removed from its origins. The album’s title – a “dacha” is a cottage in the Russian exurbs -itself even suggests a distance from the motherland. These small homes are culturally a part of the large cities, yet far outside the hubs’ geographic bounds. As a first-generation immigrant to the United States from Russia, Belaya’s work will inevitably reflect not only the motherland but also her own experiences in distant America. Belaya is neither fully Russian nor fully American but equally both. Geopolitical realities, including those related to the continuing Russia-Ukraine war, keep her from traveling back to Russia and only further underscore this cross-cultural divide.  The closer, “Deda,” shows this well. Dedicated to her grandfather, who passed in July 2021, the piece is primarily in English, where most of the lyrics on the album are in Russian. The very last words, a return to Russian, poignantly translate to “my motherland has gone past me.”

But even further removed from the Russian influences behind Dacha are the rest of the ensemble. By Belaya’s own admission, it is extremely difficult to translate the text she uses into English, a shared  language all the other artists could understand. And, for the most part, the other members of the ensemble were not informed of the text’s meanings anyway. Yet, Belaya gives drummer Stephen Boegehold, bassist Nick Dunston, violinist Ledah Finck, cellist Wesley Hornpetrie, gayageumist Doyeon Kim, trombonist Kalia Vandever, and trumpeter Chris Williams immense freedom to own perspectives and interpretations to the record. Even if they do not know the intricacies of the texts and songs that inspired much of Dacha, they can nevertheless capture the feelings behind them. Even if the actual text cannot be translated, the emotions carry through brilliantly.  Dacha is a beautiful stirring work that, while built on words, brings them to a place far beyond language.

We sat down with Belaya, who is also a professor at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and co-leader of the band ALAARA, to discuss the origins of Dacha and its power to both reflect its roots and convey a humanity that speaks to everyone. 

PostGenre: In general, is it difficult to combine Eastern European folk music with Western improvised or jazz music in a way that feels organic and not overly pulled towards one at the expense of the other? 

Sonya Belaya: That’s a good question. I think a lot of Eastern European folkloric songs, specifically Soviet bard songs – my first form of music making – are part of an incredible and fascinating oral tradition. That tradition is rooted in underground oral protest music. It is very interesting to read about that music and to listen to it. 

But I think for me, the connection between those songs and jazz is grounded in the words. It is about how much I can hold and fit with the text, and how it can be transformed through improvisation. As you can hear, I don’t sing a lot on the album and instead present a few phrases or a few words to contemplate. There are obviously through-line melodies and poetry on the record, but I do not use a standard song form. And I do that with a lot of intention, because I think the text is so rich and so deep. The text also has an impossibility of translation. I think sitting with minimal text gives both me, as a composer, and the people I’m playing with the ability to process it in real time. I think improvising and writing while using these melodies and texts really allows me to process the power of the word in real-time. While there are not necessarily improvised forms traditionally built into bard songs, I think it’s highly intuitive for me to bring the songs into improvisation.

I also think there is a beautiful analogy of the fractured lens of immigrants and what it means to reframe these forms. What it means to hold on to your native land. Especially when, for someone like me, it’s fraught with problems and you’re literally blocked from going home in many ways. 

PG: So, when composing the pieces, what is your process for integrating poems into the music? 

SB: Honestly, it depends. A track like “In the Garden” came mostly from stretching the melodic material and focusing on certain parts of a phrase to extend and reframe. It is a bridal folk song, but I’m singing and interpreting it to reflect anguish. However, for both “Requiem” and “Remember, Keep to It,” I was struggling to figure out whether I wanted to sing the text or speak it. I tried to push a little bit to figure out some form, but if I’m feeling that something really isn’t working, I go back to what seems  intuitive to me. For those texts, it was more intuitive to me to just play with speaking and the proper vocal processing of the text. So, how I integrate the text really depends.

PG: Is it ever difficult to convey the emotion behind the texts when the other musicians presumably do not speak Russian and may not know the full meaning of the poems?

SB: Another good question. Personally, I have experience playing with bicultural or bilingual musicians on projects where I don’t really know what the words are, or exactly what the lyrics mean. But I think maybe that is the same as the experience of listening to the music for many people. They can feel the intent behind the music even if they do not fully understand what is being said. I think that’s the beauty of not always translating text. 

Sometimes I did give the other musicians context about the text’s meanings. I think the framework that you create with the text and the music should allow for grounding amongst the musicians. I think I might do that a little differently now than what I did on the record. But that’s an unavoidable part of the process of learning and growing creatively. 

But to me, creating a framework for other musicians to play and explore these things, even if they don’t understand the text, allows for true compassion and empathy by the other musicians to emerge. We don’t have to fully understand or have a full connection to someone else’s experience to say you are still with them and support them. Empathy and sympathy transcend language barriers and is an incredibly powerful community making tool that we have available to us all. 

PG: As far as the other musicians, they are providing a fairly unique instrumentation for the Dacha band. The instrumentation – yourself on piano and vocals, with drums, bass, viola/violin, cello, trumpet, and trombone – is the same as on your live recording from five years earlier [Dacha: Live at Roulette (self-release, 2020)]. But one change is switching the vibraphone in favor of the gayageum.  Other than the gayageum player, Doyeon Kim, being an incredible musician, what made you decide to incorporate her instrument into the group?

SB: I really enjoy the idea of how different musicians can inform and change the music. I had played with Doyeon maybe a month or two before we recorded the album. It was a very casual show with her, Tomas Fujiwara, and Adam O’Farrill. We were just trying some things. And I felt held something in her sound that was important to me to have on the record. 

Doyeon wasn’t originally slotted to be on the record and at that point I only had played some basic seeds of the songs. But when we played them, I realized how great it would be to hear her on them. Once I heard, in my head, Doyeon as part of the group, I couldn’t unhear it. 

But it was also very important for me to make sure the album did not feel like something I wrote for a large ensemble that just had the gayageum stacked on top of it. It was very important to have orchestrations that create hybrid textures and instruments in service of the feeling of the music. 

One of my favorite moments on the record is when Doyeon and I are playing duo on “Future Living.” At that moment, there is a transition from one section of poem to another. The first section is a poem by Anna Akhmatova, an iconic early Twentieth Century feminist poet in Russia. It is very hopeful and emphasizes the possibility of the future. Doyeon and I processed it as it unraveled into the darker section of the poem, which speaks of altars and churches burning during the fall into communism. Put together, it all reflects cycles of war and violence. There’s a deep wailing. A very deep thematic processing of the text. Even without Doyeon knowing the full context of the piece. she was fully able to access the feeling behind the work. To me, it was all about the emotion of sound. All of the musical choices for the album were made in the service of feeling. The moment we recorded also came at an incredibly difficult moment in my life. 

PG: Which may partly tie to how you describe your practice as music as social work. 

SB: I think in a way, yeah. My approach to art making, in terms of its relationship to this concept of social work, is to read and investigate social work practices, particularly as they relate to immigrants in the United States and the social and community nets that we have for taking care of immigrants, particularly immigrant women. 

But I also see music as through lines for disseminating power away from myself to collaborators. I often have as many collaborators as I can. It’s very important to me in the ethos of music as a social practice to emphasize how art making should mirror life and power sharing resources within a community. 

I think it’s important – especially as part of the Russian diaspora – to investigate the histories of protest in Russia.  I saw an interview recently that said that the condition of Russian artists is to live in exile. I resonate with that a lot. I’m not in exile per se, but there’s so much cultural history that is a very subversive protest. I think the West doesn’t really understand it. And so it was really important to me in this body of work to investigate those histories, like reading [Anna] Akhmatova and digging in more into histories of the bard song. It is important to acknowledge the history and that it exists. It’s important to know about its rejection of fascism and authoritarianism. 

And lately, I’ve been very interested in this idea of “outernationalism,” a term [Riyuchi] Sakamoto coined. Amirtha Kidambi has been talking about it a lot, as well. It’s the idea that we can live beyond the borders of what has been created for us. Beyond things like nation-states. I think the greatest moments of connection, wisdom, and intelligence that allow me to see the world through different eyes has been from working with immigrants in this country. I really try to think about how to shift my music and my artistic practice to that lens. 

I read in a social work research journal of a therapist who was talking about the use of feminist practices in therapy and the shift towards what this therapist called “the expertise of the oppressed” as a source of great wisdom.  I really  try to focus on that and honor that as well. 

PG: Presumably, you also bring your own experience as a child of immigrants to the perspective, as well. The notes to Dacha also speak about your mother’s disappearance and the deaths of your grandparents. Do you see music making as a cathartic release for handling the severe emotions associated with those things?

SB: l wrote the music for the album immediately after the Russia-Ukraine war started, so that was definitely a consideration in my putting the music together. To give some context, almost my whole family is in Moscow. My sisters are here in the states, but everybody else is over in Moscow. My grandfather died of COVID shortly before the war started the summer of 2021. I was able to go to his funeral only because I had received an American vaccine. Then February 2022, the invasion happened. There are still no direct flights from here to there. Then my grandmother died two months after the war started, and I couldn’t go to her funeral. And that was on top of my mother going missing when I was twenty. 

I think the war only added to the distance that I already have from home. Music became, for me, a way to stay tethered. A way to make sure I did not lose that thread to the motherland. When I first started writing music, a lot of it was in response to what happened with my mother. However, it was a lot of intellectualization of what happened. I think Dacha is also a lot of intellectualizing what was happening with the war and what it meant to me. It’s hard for me to talk about. I’m scared to talk about it because it inherently hurts my chances of going back to Russia safely someday. I wrote all the music on the album frantically right after the pandemic and after the war started, and tried to intellectualize what was happening.

PG: I’m sorry. 

SB: Well, I think right now I’m in a much better place. The music I’m working on now is about fully allowing yourself to experience the breadth of everything in life, and less about intellectualizing things. It is about marrying the somatic and the intellectual. I think it reflects who I am now much more than when I wrote the album three years ago. 

PG: What more can you share about your new project? You are about to present it at Roulette, correct? [Ed. note: Such performance took place on September 30, 2025.]

SB: Yeah. Yazik is a multidisciplinary piece that investigates two central characters: “Mother” and “language”. I’m playing “language.” And my dear friend and collaborator, Nandi Rose, is playing the character of an immigrant mother.” Nandi is the leader of the incredible band Half Waif. What’s crazy about her playing the mother role is that she’s actually seven months pregnant. I think her playing the role while pregnant will be especially powerful. 

The work is about an immigrant mother and her relationship, both to her native tongue and to the American English that’s forced upon her and superimposed upon her. The work explores the tension between these languages and is heavily inspired by the work of [filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky, who has been a pivotal figure for me over the last few years. I have spent a lot of time getting to know his work as part of the lineage of great Russian artists in exile. His film, Nolstalghia (Solvinfilm /RAI 2, 1983), is especially a big influence on this work. 

Musically, my new project is very different for me. I composed and sound-designed a lot of it in Ableton. I have an incredible team of the director and costume designer, Yuchang Xiao, and someone doing projections, Jiangnan Hou. Art direction by Laura Sofía Pérez.  Nola Sporn Smith is doing movement direction. I also have an amazing band as part of it as well. The project feels like a culmination of this transition from intellectualization to somatic experiencing. And it also incorporates field recordings I’ve made. Some are from my last visit to Russia, and some are from when I was in Italy. I’m also not playing piano at all for it, which is really interesting. 

PG: So are you mostly singing and acting in the “language” role?

SB: No. I’m also playing accordion and an instrument called the gusli. It’s a small Russian lap harp. I’m by no means an expert on it. I literally just got it maybe four months ago. But I was very curious about putting myself in a position of growth. The piano is a very comfortable place for me. It’s easy for me to hide behind my skillset and behind virtuosity on it. But I’m really focusing on moving beyond those things. I’ve been learning to play the accordion a little over the last year, too.

PG: What do you mean when you say you are trying to move beyond virtuosity?

SB: I think virtuosity on an instrument is such a colonized concept. That is not to say that the amount of time and training needed to master the instrument is not important. However, focusing on those things discounts the importance of the lived experience of so many people, time, resources, and physical ability. That is especially true of an instrument like the piano that has such a weighted definition of what it means to be talented or virtuosic. 

I have a chronic illness called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which shapes the way that I play. I can’t play certain things or in certain ways. I feel that in choosing not to play the piano and instead choosing to play different instruments, I’m on this true path of self determination about what musicianship means to me and what I feel. What can “virtuosity” actually be, and how can we expand the idea of what it means? That is what I want to find out. 

‘Dacha’ will be released on Ropeadope Records on October 10, 2025. It can be purchased on Bandcamp. More information on Sonya Belaya is available on her website.