IT has already become a tradition in Russia to celebrate the birthday of Leonid Utesov, a famous singer and musician, on March 10 while Malaysia celebrates March 22 as the birthday of the outstanding singer, musician and actor, Tan Sri P. Ramlee.
March gave two outstanding personalities to the world.
P. Ramlee (1929-1973) and Utesov (1895-1982) are both multitalented personalities who became legends, primarily in the entertainment field but also in the context of national culture as a whole.
Both are "self-made men" and became top entertainers exclusively because of their talent, imagination and workmanship.
Their fame, though, goes beyond the national boundaries due to the unique character of their talent and universal character of their art.
P. Ramlee proved to be "the best of the best" throughout his creative life.
From an ordinary actor to accomplished director, composer and singer — that's him in chronological order. His life was short but he managed to do amazingly much.
As a film actor and director, P. Ramlee created a new type of the hero: the kind and charming "little man" who never loses the optimism and the belief in the future.
The ability to combine entertainment with a critical attitude towards social injustice makes his films very relevant until now.
Being a very talented person P. Ramlee found the most important topics for Malay society and skillfully used them as a background for making vivid, pure professional entertainment films.
His contribution to the national music culture is unprecedented. The very touching and sentimental melodies combined with his heartfelt voice have fascinated the public until now.
The same can be said of Leonid Utesov who is the legend and pride of Russian (Soviet) culture.
Despite his lack of musical background, he became the most popular singer of his time. In a country where jazz was declared "music of the fats," he managed to not only establish, but also to preserve for many years, the first of the Soviet jazz.
Up to the end of his life, Utesov became an irreplaceable leader and a soloist of a self-created band. He was the first performer of a wide array of songs which had the whole country singing.
And what could be more dear for an artiste than the fact that the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was listening to his song while in the rocket before his flight into space! Or when Duke Ellington himself, during his visit to Moscow in 1972, told Utesov: "If you ever need a pianist, you know where to find him."
Unlike P. Ramlee, his involvement in the world of cinema was quite modest. But some of the movies, especially Cheerful Guys (1934) which starred Utesov in the main role with his band, was a great success and considered among the best in the world.
The New York Times wrote: "If you think Moscow is only fighting, learning and working? You are wrong, Moscow is laughing! And it is so contagious and cheerful that you will laugh with them (in America the film was released under the title Moscow laughs)".
Due to some circumstances mainly of political nature (relations between Russia and Malaysia were established only in 1967), P. Ramlee is undeservedly quite unknown to the Russian public as well as Utesov to the public in Malaysia.
The only two articles about P. Ramlee in Russia, which were written by the author of this article, appeared just at the beginning of this millennium in Pocket Encyclopedia of Malaysia (2000) and in the journal Asia and Africa today (2001).
While P. Ramlee's songs and films are widely used in the process of teaching Malay in the Russian universities, the name of Utesov is quite obscure for Malaysians until now.
Hopefully the fact that Russia and Malaysia celebrate the birthdays of their two outstanding artistes in the same month will not only pay tribute to both P. Ramlee and Utesov, but also help to promote a livelier cultural dialogue between both countries.
The writer, writing from Moscow, is a former lecturer of University Malaya
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times