In one of my most recent compositions I say that
| Somos un lienzo pintado por nuestra vivencias | We are a canvas painted by our experiences |
|---|---|
| Melodía que se vuelve canción al compás de mi andar | Melody that becomes song to the rhythm of my walk |
I'm convinced that life works this way. Every experience we live every day marks us and leaves its trace on us, to a greater or lesser extent.
The time before
In 1995 my financial situation became very deplorable and I had to start playing and singing in restaurants and bars. Until that moment I had never considered being a soloist, since professionally I had only worked as part of groups. For that reason, I had not even analyzed what name I should use, my real name, an artistic name or a nickname. So I started to use my own name Ylich (it's Russian), one that is not very common in Latin America and whose pronunciation is not easy for many Latinos.
I have had the immense privilege to work almost all my life with one of the best female singer in the world: my sister, and her name is Hely, another unusual name.
When I started playing at nights, she already had long time doing the same, thats why she was already well known in that environment.
As in Spanish the "h" is silent, the pronunciation of her name is "Elee", so when people was speaking about us, they mixed both names saying "Eelee", "Eilich", "Yli", "Elich" even names like "Uli", "Olich", etc. , indistinctly to call her or me. Almost allways they knew they weren't saying it right, but it was hard for them to remember.
Speaking foreign
By the year 2000 I was working at La Taberna El Greco, a restaurant in Caracas with live music. One night some foreign friends of mine came to have a good time. During my break I sat down with them and we started talking. After a while I noticed that the waiters had a strange behavior. One came after the other, they whispered among themselves. Suddenly one of them came, the most talkative one, he began to listen to our conversation and excited, at full volume he says: It's true, he speaks Russian, he's Russian! That indiscretion made everyone laugh. From that moment on, they all started calling me "El Ruso" (the Russian).
But I realized that this day the audience also got closer to me, more spontaneous and confident: "Ruso, could you please play a salsa", "Ruso, may I ask you to sing this or that song", "Come on Ruso, let's have a drink" and so on.
So I decided to use this as my nickname and the effect was the same all the time and on different places. So, finally I made the decision to use it for my new project too, where I will be "Ylich El Ruso".
Why my new project is based on Russian songs is another story I tell you soon.
Getting back to the intro of this post, you can see how a simple fact as this one makes changes in your life. That is why it's good to value all the things that happen to us every day.
Epilogue
The funniest part of this story is that my friends and me were not speaking Russian but German, they came all from Germany, so today I could have been "El Alemán" (The German).
