Leonid Samojlovich Dukhovny
was born on July 18, 1938 in Kiev (Ukraine). He graduated from the Moscow State
Building Construction University (MISI), Department of Mechanics and University of
Culture later on, where he specialized in producing.
He immigrated to the USA in 1992. Currently he is living in San
Francisco. Leonid started to write songs in 1956.
As of now he wrote more than 200 songs, recorded CDs and tapes.
One of the his first songs "A bez Podola Kiev nevozmozhen..." (1959)
spreaded around the country and became a "folk song".
This song can be heard in the restaurants
and by the camp fire during the mountain climbing expeditions.
He wrote songs using his own poetry as well as
poetry of R. Berns, B. Stain, N. Karpov, and B. Fedorov.
His opened and cheerful poetry is based on
philosophy and optimism. Some of his songs are full of irony.
Parody to Vladimir Vysotsky song translations is
one of this. Actor Alexander Vilkov plays this song during performance
of "U Nikitskih Vorot" theatre. Leonid published research work related to bard-movement and lectured at Stanford University (Palo Alto, California). He performed many concert progams in former "homeland" as well as outside of the country. He is one of the founders of "Poluostrov" bard-club . Recently Leonid recorded last CD in the States. He called it "Lets talk...". This is a string from his first song written in immigration. Yu. Kukin wrote anotation to this CD:
"Ya nikogda ne zhil samoobmanom
I ne vershil velikie dela,
No esli ty poehal za tumanom,
To eto zna4it, - zhizn' ne zrya proshla!"
