Venya D'rkin
Venya D'rkin, real name – Alexander Mikhailovich Litvinov, was a Ukrainian Russian-language bard, poet, artist, painter, and writer of fairy tales. Over his lifetime, he had written over three hundred songs. As usual in the bard genre, the songs contain imaginative lyrics, but, less commonly, are also very melodic. During the late 1990s, he performed some of his songs accompanied by other musicians, notably the violinist Veronika Belyayeva.
In a 1998 interview in the Russian Rock-n-Roller newspaper, his stage name was explained by his "agent" Natalia: at one festival, he jokingly registered himself as "Venya Dyrkin from Maksyutovka". Unexpectedly, he won a prize at the festival, and his fake name was shown on big screen, thus becoming his stage name.
D'rkin died of cancer on 21 August 1999. Though he was not widely known in his lifetime, he has since obtained a cult following in the Russian-language bard genre. This can be attributed to the fact that before his death, only two of his albums were released, and even those were distributed in only a very small number of copies. He also never played in front of a large audience; most of his public performances were in music festivals and apartment concerts.
A story in song D'rkin had written was posthumously released on CD.