Lydia Salnikova's music breaks the language barrier

Photo by Saul Young, copyright © 2011 // Buy this photo

Lydia Salnikova, formerly of the band Bering Strait, has recently moved to Knoxville and is pursuing a solo career. Here she is pictured at the Preservation Pub, where she will be performing Friday, Sept. 30.

KNOXVILLE — Lydia Salnikova is still getting adjusted to Knoxville, but the Russian native is a little closer to one of her first inspirations.

"The movie, 'The Bodyguard,' the song 'I Will Always Love You' had a big impact on me," says Salnikova over lunch at Stir Fry Cafe on Kingston Pike. "Maybe that was the first time I really realized I wanted to do this for a living. I didn't know what she was singing, but I would write down what I would think she was singing."

While the song was sung by Whitney Houston in the film, it was written by East Tennessee's Dolly Parton.

Salnikova says if you'd look at what she thought the words meant before she could speak English, it's pretty funny. However, the melody and the emotion spoke to her regardless.

That's what Salnikova is trying to do with her own music.

"As a songwriter, musician, my No. 1 goal is to make someone feel something. Most of the time I'm writing about something sad, but I'm Russian. That's part of the culture."

Raised in Obninsk, near Moscow, Salnikova moved to the United States 10 years ago to pursue music as part of the band Bering Strait. The group's trials and tribulations were featured in the critically lauded 2003 documentary "The Ballad of Bering Strait." Over the course of a decade, the band toured the United States, was featured on the TV show "60 Minutes," recorded two albums for Universal Records and even received a Grammy nomination for the song "Bearing Straight" in 2003. However, the band didn't live up to commercial expectations.

"They didn't know exactly what to do with us," says Salnikova, noting that the group could never quite be true country artists.

Bering Strait officially disbanded in 2006.

"It's just what happens to most bands. It's hard to stay together. As you're growing as musicians and get older people have their own visions of what they wanted to make and it's not cohesive anymore. We still see each other. We're still friends. We're all doing music, just not together."

She says 2006 felt like a good time to reinvent herself. In 2010, she released her first solo album "Hallway." While it features vocals and keyboard that fans of Bering Strait would recognize as Salnikova, it's a definite departure from the countryish sound of her old band and it is finding an audience.

"I realize I'm not everyone's cup of tea. But every now and then you'll get an e-mail from someone who heard you, even in an off night, and will say how much your music means to them."

When she was asked to perform for NASA at the Space Center in Houston in April, Salnikova found out that her music had been played in space. She was also invited to perform as part of the Uri's Night celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight. At that function, she found herself being asked by a slightly tipsy American astronaut to translate into English a toast spoken in Russian.

"It's a tradition that astronauts and cosmonauts stand up together and give toasts (in the other's language)."

While she was a little wary of translating what the astronaut was saying in elementary Russian back into English, she says it was a beautiful speech.

Salnikova, who moved to Knoxville a few months ago, now makes most of her living as a studio musician adding keyboards and vocals to other artists' recordings.

She goes home at Christmas to visit her family.

"My family still feels like my family, but the U.S. is where I can do my job. (English) is the language I use when I write songs."

And even if not everyone from her native land understands the words, the message still gets across.

She remembers when she first played her mother the Bering Strait recording of Salnikova's song "Safe In My Lover's Arms." Her mother couldn't understand the words.

"She said, 'It sounds like you're standing at the top of a mountain,'" says Salnikova.

The opening lyrics are: "I'm standing on top of a mountain high/beauty of the land stands/lies before my eyes/But what's the land to me or colors of the sky/Cause I can't breathe until I'm safe in my lover's arms."

"Of course it wasn't just me," says Salnikova. "The producer got it. He helped me make the music I had in my head with that song. It's magical when that happens."

© 2011, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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