"To feel music, to perceive it as something alive"
We tell you more about the deceased Ural musician Vadim StroykinoThe previous morning, security forces had raided his apartment on suspicion of funding the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At one point, Stroykin went to the kitchen for a drink of water. He then jumped out of a 10th-floor window. The musician was 59 years old.
🎧 Vadim Stroykin — a minstrel, composer, and brilliant self-taught guitarist, founder of his own school and mentor. He played guitar for over forty years, fifteen of which he taught to children and adults using his own method and drawing on his own experience.
“For me, Vadim has become the person who teaches you to feel music, to perceive it as something living, and not the intricacies of musical theory,” “Vadim is an excellent teacher, truly passionate about music,” — the students responded.
"I light new stars. I teach while I learn," Vadim proudly wrote on social media, showing off his young students. As the guitarist recounted in one of his interviews, more than a hundred people, aged 9 to 82, have graduated from his school.
"When I was rejected from music school, citing my lack of ear for music, my dad bought me Emilio Pujol's 'Self-Instruction Manual for the Six-String Guitar.' That orange book was probably in every decent Soviet home. <…> That's how I began to master the instrument, working through etudes," Vadim recalled. "Then my life was filled with geological exploration, tourism, and mountain climbing—that is, songs accompanied by guitar, chords I'd 'observed,' and various strummings. However, thanks to the once-dirty Pujol, I played quite decently. In particular, I tried to find melody elements and accompaniment within a chord."
Vadim was born in Chelyabinsk Snezhinsk, studied at the then SverdlovskHe graduated from the British School of Journalism and worked briefly at the radio station Ekho Moskvy. Ekaterinburg" — was the author and host of the program "Anthology of Author's Songs." He was involved in tourism and owned his own travel agency. In recent years, he lived in St. Petersburg, was actively involved in music, taught online and in person, traveled and toured.
Vadim openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, criticized the actions of Vladimir Putin, and published anti-war poems.
"I don't even know what to write... Well, I know. You already understand everything, basically... The main thing is not to sober up, Vadim wrote in 2022. "Otherwise, I'd go crazy... I recently bought an entire globe, just by chance. It wasn't expensive, 625 rubles. I don't know how to pray, so I just cup it in my hands and press it to my heart."
“What have you done?” “Vadik, Vadik…” Stroykin's friends wrote on his social media after the news of his death. "Did he fall out of a window or was he thrown out?", "Like a bird... In flight... He didn't want to live behind bars," "This isn't the first news story about someone committing suicide after the arrival of the security forces," supported by social media users.
"Waiting for a late passerby,
Autumn burned through the twilight with its leaves.
The lanterns seemed different,
They stared at the asphalt very intently.
Dissolute women rushed by,
The alleys are filled with squeals,
And the cars, not at all passing,
They honked frantically in response.
I looked at all this with excitement,
I thought (by the way, completely sincerely) -
If the worm of doubt gnaws at you again,
"I won't go drown myself."
