Spell-Art/Спел-Арт/שפּיל-אָרט: Multilingualism And Foreign-ness In Songs
Pavel Lion, a.k.a. Psoy Korolenko, is a Moscow based singer/songwriter, translator, scholar, and journalist. Sometimes referred to as a ''wandering scholar'' and an ''avant-bard," his multilingual one-person cabaret-esque show balances folk, klezmer music, free-style poetry, and intellectual comedy.
Psoy writes and sings in English, Russian, Yiddish, and French. Performing since 2000, he has published one book of selected essays and song lyrics, ''The Hit Of The Century,” a book of selected essays ''Energosbyt,’’ and 15 CDs, some of them in collaboration with other musicians.
Psoy is a member of the organizing committee for the Russian-American music festival JetLAG. He has been a guest of many other festivals and has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Michigan and Dickinson College.
An insightful songwriter, Psoy is known for his keen and explorative vision of the art of translation, “transdaptation,” and what he calls Spell-Art—playing with foreign text, emphasizing linguistic distances, and meshing multilingual songs.