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Platon Stepanovich Stepanov (1890-1970), coming from the tribe of Khongodor, was born in the village of Nygda of the Alar district, the Irkutsk region in the family of a poor man. It was just from his countrymen also poor and working as untiring laborers in the farms of the rich hosts. One should say a few words concerning the uligershin’s mother Anna Urbanovna who was an unordinary story-teller. She knew the uligers “Geser”, “Altai Shagai mergen”, “Uta Sagaan Mergen”, “Khan Taija”, “Melei Ulaan duukhei” performing the first two works in singing.
She liked to tell the fairy-tales and uligers to her son, opened in front of him a fascinating world of the people’s poetry, managed to excite in him the seeds of love for the art of word. Platon began to sing since he was still a child.
When he was sixteen P. Stepanov could tell the fairy-tales and uligers all by himself. He learned from well-known in Alar and Unga storytellers or uligershins. Having mastered the regulations of the traditional epical and song activity he could create or vary in his own way the traditional pieces.
He sang his own song of the love and tragic death of a girl, Marzhan by name. P. Stepanov’s songs were sung by the common folk reflecting their thoughts and dreams. The singer’s gift particularly strengthened during the years of the Great Patriotic War, he raised the spirits of the soldiers leaving for the frontline, giving instructions in their struggle with the enemy and wishing to come back home with glory and victory.
P. Stepanov’s creating activity that has obtained the recognition of his countrymen attracted the attention of the folklorists. In 1967 a fragment of the uliger “Altai Shagai mergen” (its beginning) performed by P.Stepanov was recorded on the audio tape by D. S. Dugarov, scored and with the versified texts in Buryat and Russian appeared in his book “The Buryat peoples’ songs”.
P. Stepanov just like the other Buryat storytellers when performing the epic gives its content, all the finest shades of meaning of his genuine native tongue without using the foreign words and in the places where they still occur he easily substitutes them for by the words from his own tongue. As R. A. Sherkhunayev wrote: “on the 30 of November, 1964 at the Nygda eight-form school there was the evening party devoted to the people’s poetry. I gave a talk on the folklore of the Buryats and the creative activity of Platon Stepanov. The people’s singer performed the fragments from the uligers “Geser”, “Altan Shagai mergen”, the old and new songs…”.
Further he marks that from the lips of Platon Stepanov the poetical words come out like a clear and sweet spring soothing the ear and enchanting and fascinating with its briskness, imagery and peculiar flavor and coloring. In the performing manner of the Buryat rhapsodes there is something traditional and canonical owing to the style nature of this kind of art.
However within the borders of the performing art of the uligershin-singer there are undoubtedly some individual peculiarities and specific features. As for P. Stepanov he tells the uliger either evenly, with no haste, or quickly and loudly, at full exhalation as if in a breath pronouncing the stanza and then quite unnoticeably it gets lowered down to whisper. The declamation alternates with recitation. The listeners are charmed by the richness and variety of intonation, artistic mastery of the uligershin.
The declamation and the recitative are substituted for by singing. The stoty-teller is in a more or less quiet state and frame of mind with his right hand on his chest, the left hand touching his chin from time to time. In time with the rhythm of the songs the uligershin stamps his foot, slightly swings from one side to the other… In the end of this or that picture supporting and inspiring the singer the listeners pronounce amicably: “Zai-heel! Zai-heel!”. At times the storyteller reducing the text on purpose gives the events as a prosaic text.
S. P. Baldayev in his article ”The Buryat uligershins and gesershins” gives a list of “the most prominent people’s poets-storytellers’ in which the honorary place is given to P. Stepanov as the story-teller of the Geseriade. It is from him that in 1940 S. P. Baldayev wrote down in 1940 a few chapters of the epic “Abai Geser khubuun”: Geser’s being born on the Earth, his deeds in his childhood and marriage, destruction of the three sharablin khans and Gal Nurma khan, totally exceeding 2000 verse lines.
The researcher D.A.Burchina having studied the ten basic variants of “Abai Geser” belonging to the Unga version and being spread in one region, on the left bank of the Angara river notes that in the variant by P. Stepanov Geser’s image particularly well embodies in himself the traditional features of the Buryat epical tales (Burchina D. A. The Geseriade of the western Buryats. – Novosibirsk, 1990. – p. 67).
One should also note that in this variant most notable is the introduction for the epical actions inherent in the traditional uligers. The peculiarity of the introduction creating the background of the mythical origin of life or time is displayed in combining of the common places with the Buryat uliger introduction, foe example:
hоон ехэ далайн
Горхоложо байхадань,
hүмэр ехэ уулайн
Боори болдог байхадань
When the great milk sea
Flowed like a spring,
When the great Sumer-mountain
Was just a small hillock.
And addressing the divine personages of the celestial pantheon given in the Geseriade:
Барууни табин табан тэнгэриин
Баталагдажа байха сагтань,
Зүүнэй олон тэнгэриин
Зүбөө олон байха сагтань...
In the times when strengthening were
The western fifty five tengris,
In the times when the eastern many tengris
Were obtaining superiority over the others…
Over sixty years Platon Stepanov served his own people with his inspired creative activity. He left an appreciable mark in folklore heritage of the Buryats as an exceptional singer and story-teller.
