Егор Поляков

Yegor Polyakov (1871—1931/38˟) was a Russian virtuoso guitarist, choirmaster, and conductor from a distinguished Romani musical dynasty, brother of Dmitry Polyakov (1878—1948) and Nastia Polyakova (1877—1947), with whom he often collaborated (see Egor on the left on the last photo), father of Valerian Polyakov (1907—1967) and uncle of Vladimir Poliakoff (1887—1985). Born and raised at a nomadic Gypsy camp in the central Russian Empire, Yegor was a self-taught musician — like most of his family. At sixteen, he began playing guitar with one of Moscow's gypsy choirs. Between 1892 and 1902, Polyakov worked with Ivan Rom-Lebedev as resident accompanist of renowned singer Varya Panina at "Yar" (Яръ) restaurant. In 1912 and 1913, Egor Poliakov made several gramophone records, accompanying his sister Nastia on the Gramophone Concert Record and Peter Batorin and Semyon Sadovnikov on the Amour Gramophone Record. Yegor also co-founded the Gypsy Choir of Famous Performers of Gypsy Songs (Цыганск. Хоръ знам. исп. Цыганск. пѣсенъ) with his siblings and conducted several other ensembles. In his May 1928 memoirs, Polyakov recalled performing for legendary Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, among other notable celebrities. Unlike Nastya and Dmitry, Yegor remained in Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolutions; he continued leading several Gypsy-themed choirs and ensembles, touring extensively across the USSR with over 100 vocalists and musicians under his direction by the early 1920s. As the communist ideology became more stringent and totalitarian towards a broader range of genres, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) soon condemned Gypsy romances as "too decadent" and anti-proletarian. Yegor Polyakov managed to repurpose his choir towards theatrical productions, writing and directing an experimental "mosaic-operetta" play, Gypsies Renewing the Path, featuring "200 gypsies," as announced on the posters (i.e., the entire cast of his original choir and numerous other fellow Romani singers and musicians), which premiered in February 1927. His stage career never reached the same acclaim as pre-revolutionary choir, though; some researchers blame Yegor's son-in-law, Georgiy Pavlovich Lebedev (1900—1969), husband of his daughter Maria Polyakova (1904—1976), who served as the first director of a newly-established gypsy Romen Theatre (Театр «Ромэн») in Moscow. Lebedev was reportedly arrogant and utterly cautionless in his dealings with Soviet officials, by proxy tarnishing Polyakov's reputation and incapacitating his later career. ˟ According to Ivan Rom-Lebedev's memoirs, Yegor Polyakov died around 1938. An authoritative Romani translator and historian, Valdemar Kalinin (b. 1946), cited the year as "1931" in his 2005 publications.