The music industry can be divided into mainstream, to include what is recorded, promoted and sold, and everything else.
Sergey Chanturiya, an instrumental electric guitarist whose music is only available live at the concerts he organizes, belongs to the second group. He also has an interesting background, which probably helped shape his attitude toward his art.
Like any person, Sergey has had his ups and downs, but neither has distracted him from the goals he sets himself. His style of music is largely unknown in Ukraine, but his counterparts in the West, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, also don't enjoy the mass appeal of some western pop stars.
Chanturiya was born in 1956 in the Georgian city of Batumi. In 1959, he moved to Kyiv with his mother, who had divorced his father. Although an ethnic Georgian, Sergey doesn't speak his native language, as he didn't have much of an opportunity to practice it in Ukraine.
Since early childhood, he had dreamt of becoming a musician. His mother was a professional singer, and all of his sisters attended music schools. At first, Chanturiya wanted to learn to play the violin. But at the age of 13, his mother bought him an acoustic guitar, which he has never parted with since. He took it with him to school and played it during breaks between classes.
His passion for the guitar, however, affected his other studies. Besides physical education, Russian literature and singing, Chanturiya wasn't a serious pupil. Even in secondary school, he only learned what he liked. His secondary school would stage amateur concerts, but Sergey didn't take part. His first musical performance was as a student at the merchant marine academy in Georgia, where he returned after secondary school. After that followed more than four years of sailing on trade fleet vessels, mostly oil tankers.
At that time, being a sailor was a prestigious profession, as it allowed a person to leave the country and visit the West, with its store full of goods which ordinary Soviet citizen could only dream about.
But Chanturiya was not your ordinary Soviet consumer. When his ship arrived at a foreign port, the other members of the crew spent their money on clothes, stereos, etc. "But I bought vinyl LPs," says Sergey. "People told me that I was crazy. At that time an LP cost about 27 Deutsche Marks, and jeans cost only about 18-20 Deutsche marks." I also bought music magazines and listened to as much radio as I could", he added.
Eventually, Chanturiya decided to quit the merchant marines and become a professional musician. His father didn't approve, worried that Sergey would end up as a penniless wanderer. At that time, most people considered music a hobby. Only when Chanturiya performed on TV several years later did his dad change his mind about his son's decision.
In 1980, Sergey got a job at the philharmonic in Adzhariya, Georgia. He was able to start working as a musician right away because he had played the guitar since he was a kid.
In 1983, he moved to Kostroma, in Russia, where he'd been invited to play with a rock band called Vizit, which was just being formed at that time. "There I started to grow and compose my own music. After working for two years with Vizit, my boss, the director of the band, let me direct the work of the band, and I started to completely handle its repertoire," he said.
Soon, after Vizit became known in Russia, Chanturiya starting writing music for the band to travel abroad. But his boss was pessimistic and said that Soviet rock bands would never be able to give concerts abroad. That was in 1986. So, Chanturiya left the band and created his own band in Moscow called Super R.
Also in Moscow, Sergey took part in an international music contest called Interchance, winning first prize in 1988. This led to a contract to play at a festival in Hannover, followed by a 10-stop tour around Germany. But the collapse of the Berlin Wall several months later put an end to these plans. It was during the flurry of political and social changes that ensued that cheesy pop bands began to flourish in Russia, Sergey recalls. Music went from art to background entertainment. Sergey went on to become one of the former Soviet Union's top five guitar players.
Then, in 1991, Chanturiya tried his hand as a producer, purchasing, along with his partners, the rights to hold the Interchance contest in Ukraine. This was the first and only time that the festival had been held in Ukraine. Fifteen bands took part from Russia alone. Other music festivals followed, until one day Sergey decided to make an album called "Me and My Friends," which was never released. Why? "First of all, I don't want to feed audio pirates; and the second reason is that there is no great interest in instrumental music," Sergey explains.
Still a die hard audience exists, whom some would describe as "long hairs" or "Bohemians." Sergey dismisses such remarks as snobbism. "A person goes to the opera and pays a lot of money for a ticket, but maybe doesn't understand it that much. That is, it's more the following of a current fashion rather than really being an opera fan. Yet there are people who understand it, and, thank God, there always will be".
More recently, Chanturiya decided to popularize instrumental music in Ukraine by traveling around the country to give concerts. "I met a lot of people around the country who like it and many people who play it." Many local musicians have talent but not enough confidence to promote themselves.
Sergey says a musician can achieve growth by participating in various festivals, playing side by side with professional musicians from the West. By doing this, "Your wings start to grow."
The significance of playing on stage is that no matter how good a musician practiced before, he or she will still be nervous on stage and make mistakes, Sergey explains. This goes for professionals too. The surroundings are different and therefore, one picks up new skills that he wouldn't just by working in a studio.
Chanturiya continues to organize instrumental guitar music festivals. The last one was held in Kyiv on December 4th. The venue was a saloon at the bowling-club Strike - Standing room only. Chanturiya also teaches master-classes in guitar playing. At 49 years of age, the main purpose of his life is now to promote young guitarists to help them achieve commercial success. But he still has a wild, youthful dream if his own to perform in a jam session with Van Halen and Steve Vai.
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